Lightbringer
by Balrog Roike
Summary: He's eight when his father first shows him a universe consisting of a billion stars. He's ten when he first understands that the light of all those stars shines down on nothing but his father's reflection. He's thirty-three when he finally stops running and stands his ground. And he's thirty-four when he finally has to decide just how it will end. Or: Peter meets Ego early.
1. Chapter 1

text in normal font – Things that happen, normal stream of consciousness, normal commentary  
(text in breaks) – Peter's commentary on the commentary, usually sarcastic or idle, asides, things that might be important one day or should be known, thoughts that Peter has on the side  
 _text in italics_ – thoughts that do not belong to the human part of Peter, thoughts that are other, things that are solemn and serious, subconscious thoughts, things that could have been, everything that Peter doesn't really want to admit to himself, things that are important

Betaed by Starfire201

* * *

He's eight when his father first shows him a universe consisting of a billion stars.

They've just met after a long and scary journey on a giant spaceship filled to the brim with more alien shapes than Peter ever wanted to see. His father looks reassuringly normal after all this strangeness, with dark brown hair and a friendly, charming smile. He is tall and strong and he lifts him up as if Peter weighed nothing at all and the planet they stand on is weird and red and feels strangely like home.

His father seems so glad to see him, too: his eyes are warm, his voice is warm and everything about him is welcoming. It's almost as foreign to Peter as everything else.

Sure, his mother loved him but these last two years were… hard. She was so sick and she didn't always recognize him and even if she did, sometimes it seemed as if she were looking right through him and either seeing this man holding him right now – or something else altogether.

And sure, his grandpa loved him, too, his aunt, as well, but…  
But in the end, for them he still was nothing but little Peter Jason Quill, constantly in trouble, always getting into fights, the boy whose mum called his father an angel, a little too loud, a little too mouthy, a little too strange…  
They would have taken him in, he wouldn't have exactly been a burden or unwanted, but…  
Always "but".

Maybe here, with his father, he could be just Peter Jason Quill, son. No "buts" involved, for once.

Behind him, he hears the quiet whirr of a spaceship taking off and he squirms around until he can watch the sleek silver shape vanish into the wispy clouds, his father's deep laugh rumbling through him right into his very bones.

Surprisingly enough, Peter feels a slight sadness at the sight. Sure, the whole experience up to this point had been nothing short of a nightmare, filled with screams, threats, chases through dark tunnels, far too many teeth and copious amounts of snot and tears. But still…

Aliens. Spaceships. Motherships (He doesn't care what Yondu says, the Eclector is _so_ a mothership.).

 _Space pirates!  
_  
A part of him is torn; yearning for everything else out there he hasn't seen yet, has only gotten the vaguest idea of.

But, a dad, a real-life _dad_ , his _dad_!

That's so much better.

(And if he ever decides otherwise, Yondu has slipped him a little something in his backpack right before they landed on the planet. A tiny but powerful communicator, right out of Star Trek. Just in case, if he wanted to get away or something. Peter has no idea why he would want to leave; he has a _dad_ now, after all – but, just in case. Yondu had been strangely insistent and if there's one thing Peter learned after this nightmare of first contact, then that it's best for him to keep his head down and listen to Yondu. You live longer that way.)

If Peter felt overwhelmed before, then that's nothing in comparison to what he feels a few hours later.

His father is a planet.

His father is a planet and an actual _god_ (little g, but that's impressive enough in Peter's opinion) and a Celestial.

Peter has no idea what the last thing is, but he's kind of hung up on the planet part (Gods as parents happen all the time, just look at all the stories where Mum said the constellations got their names from, but who ever heard of having a _planet_ for a father?), so that's okay.

He looks around with a new kind of awe, trying to understand that _everything_ he sees, down from the pebble in front of his left shoe up to the bluish mountains in the distance, is his dad. Even the silvery fountain in front of the palace and the palace itself, heck, the air he's breathing…

He promptly tries to hold his breath – what if he's hurting his dad – but his father never even notices, instead explaining how he came to be and how he came to meet Peter's mother after a long, long time on his own.

Peter loves the story; it's like something right out of the movies, something big and romantic and sad, just like Mum always said the really big love stories have to be. (Also, the glowing brain-thingy in the diorama is just as creepy as it is neat. He kind of wants to poke it, just to see if it wobbles. He also wonders if there's really a brain at the core of the planet and if he's allowed to visit it.)

He likes being part of it even more.

For the first time in his life he's not just Peter Jason Quill, son of "That Meredith-girl. You know who I mean." but Peter Jason Quill, son of Meredith Quill of Earth and Ego of, well, Ego.

(Terra, his dad later tells him. Earth is called _Terra_ out here. Peter kind of likes the sound of that. Earth is earth is dirt. But _Terra_ sounds like a girl's name, as if the shiny blue pearl he just barely caught a glimpse of while the Eclector was speeding away, were a Celestial herself. Full of life and laughter and music she would be, Peter decides. With long blond hair and a bright smile and warm eyes, just like his mother.)

But apparently the Celestial-part is important, too, because then his father is holding out his hands and there's _light_ , bright and silvery, like starshine trying to flow back into the sky. It's what gives him his power – or it is his power, Peter's not quite clear on that part – and apparently Peter has it, too.

He holds up his own hands and tries and tries, scrunching his nose up and biting his lips. A part of him can't help but worry about what would happen if he can't do it, if he doesn't have the light. Will his father be disappointed? Will he send him back? Will he maybe decide that he wasn't his father after all?

It takes a while, but in the end there _is_ light. Faint and wispy, foggy little sparks of potential – but light. It doesn't look like much, nothing at all like his dad's starshine-brightness, but his father is still overjoyed, picking him up and swirling him around with the same deep laughter that rumbles its way deep down into Peter's chest.

There will be more, his father promises, he just has to grow up. But he _has_ the light and that's all that matters for now.

Later, after hugs and pride and tears when Peter remembers his mother again and how happy she would be that he and dad get along and more hugs, Peter gets around to asking just what the light is actually good for other than reading after bed-time. In answer Dad touches his forehead _– and lays the universe down before his feet._

…

 _Peter is ten and his world consists of wide yellow plains and reddish plants. His world consists of silver water and silver metal floating on the waves, in the air. His world consists of high arches of dark stone, of carefully carved walls and crystal-clear windows. His world consists of deep caves and high mountains and whenever he gets bored, when he's seen everything there is to see, his father creates something new. Just for him._

 _Peter is ten and no matter where he goes, what he does, what he sees, there is a universe of a billion stars in the back of his mind, beckoning him, guiding him, showing him the way._

The light in him is stronger now; still nothing more than sparks but actually useful. It makes him run faster, jump higher, makes flowers bloom and water shape into colorful bubbles in the air.

What he wants, happens. What he wills, happens. He's a god, little g, but still a god, and this whole planet is his playground under the benevolent eyes of his loving father.

He's Superman (sadly without the heat-vision so far) and Batman and Kevin Bacon. He's a space pirate and a cowboy and a prince all in one. He's Starlord, the great and powerful, the terrible, the ruler of all he surveys.

He fights dragons and bandits and ninjas and he can be as loud as he wants and scream as much as he wants and there's no school, no bullies, no bed-time, no rules to be had.

He's Peter Pan in Never-Neverland.

He's in paradise.

His father gives him no true rules to follow and everything he desires. He sleeps in the softest beds and eats the best things and no matter what he does, his father just smiles and chuckles at him with an indulgent glimmer in his eyes.

…

It's in one of the rare instances his father is actually trying to sleep that it all comes crashing down.

His father has trouble sleeping, always had, and a shouting ten-year-old certainly doesn't help.

Peter knows that and still remembers his mother – his poor, always exhausted mother, sick and yet smiling, wincing at every loud word and still so loving to a yelling kid –, so he makes his way away from the palace and near a cliff in the middle of the plains.

He's found a cave here, deeper than all the others he's ever found before, and today, when his father is asleep and not watching what Peter's doing, he's going to explore a bit. Maybe the cave actually reaches down right into the core of the planet and Peter will finally be able to see his father's brain (That… actually sounds way creepier than he means it.). Whenever Peter tried before, his father had simply shoved a wall into his way and distracted him with something shiny or colorful, but today he actually has a chance.

At first it doesn't look as if he will be successful.

The cave is big, the cave is deep, all solid stone and smooth walls, leading him deeper and deeper but not where he wants to go. At least his inbuilt night-light is useful and he amuses himself with throwing shadows at the walls, shaping dogs and birds and creepy-crawlies until he feels a slight shiver down his spine (Not that he has to be afraid. There's nothing alive on this planet after all. Nothing but his father and him.)

But finally, just when he's about to give up, there's a crack in the floor, barely wide enough for a small ten-year-old to slip his head through and have a look around.

 _Peter is ten years old and for two years a whole world has been his playground._

 _He has stars in his mind and stars in his fingertips and his eyes hold the universe in all its glory._

 _At first he sees nothing but darkness in the hollow below, but a few sparks of his light and he can see everything._

 _He wishes he didn't._

 _He tries to tell himself that what he sees are stones, some eccentricity of his father's that he hasn't witnessed before… but if there's one thing comics and forbidden late-night horror movies were good for it is teaching him what skeletons look like. They are not all human, he notes, but they are all very small._

 _Fragile. Breakable. Childlike. Children._

 _A mountain of skulls and bones, lying in a silent tomb hidden halfway to his father's core._  
 _Not dusty but clearly forgotten._

 _An afterthought._

 _There's nothing alive on this planet. Only father and him._  
 _For the first time since arriving here, Peter wonders why._

 _The stars in his mind seem fainter._

…

When his father wakes, Peter has no plan. Not really.

He has lots of ideas about the "Why", one worse than the next (thanks, forbidden late-night horror movies), but no plan.

He's standing in front of his father's museum and watches Ego's history play itself out.  
Try as he might, he can't find any mention of massacres.

It's probably the worst idea he ever had, but when father asks, he tells the truth.  
Mum always told him to never lie to her after all and even if she got angry for a time, everything always worked itself out in the end. Surely this will be the same, right?

His Dad doesn't get angry – he gets sad.  
He tells Peter about his brothers and sisters, about all his siblings, and how his father took them in and loved them – but they didn't have the light. They weren't Celestials.

It's regretful, really.

 _Peter is ten years-old and part of him is a child. This child is nodding and tearing up and in doing so probably saving his life._

 _Peter is ten years-old and a part of him, the part that fought against bullies young and old, that watched his mother suffer and die, that survived the most ruthless of Ravagers, is well on its way to being fully grown. This part of him is saving his life, too._

 _This almost grown-up is watching his father through a cloud of stars and he is noting that it's regretful that his siblings – all those small, brittle bones in one giant heap, the afterthought hidden where nobody will ever think to look – weren't Celestials._

 _It wasn't regretful that they_ died _…_

Peter is crying and hiccupping and his father is hugging him and making soothing noises.  
It's wonderful. It's all Peter ever wanted from a dad.

(It's giving him the creeps. And here he only worried about being sent back…)

But why?

What is so important about the light?

What is the light even good for?

 _Peter is ten and the child in him is nodding along to Ego's explanation. The grown-up is too._

 _They have to. They never lied to Mum, but Ego isn't her. Mum was nice and kind and happy thoughts. She never harmed anybody who hadn't harmed her first and smiled at him whenever he tried to protect those who couldn't protect themselves._

 _Ego is a bully, with the greatest stick of them all. He's not going to smush frogs, he's going to wipe them and everything else right out of existence. There's nothing alive on this planet because Ego doesn't want there to be. Why would he? Nothing can measure up to him._

 _Even Peter is not his child, but his copy, his tool, his battery-to-be. The one who will nod at all the right places and laugh at the others and praise Ego's greatness while he recreates the universe in his own shape._

 _Ego may be a god, but he's also a monster._

Peter had a universe consisting of a billion stars in the back of his mind.

He's ten when he first understands that the light of all those stars shines down on nothing but his father's reflection.


	2. Chapter 2

Fleeing is hard. Fleeing is easy.  
Peter has no plan. Peter has a dozen plans.  
In the end it's both parts of him, the child and the grown-up, who come up with something that works.  
It's simple, really. It's the hardest thing he has ever done.

He whines.

He's lonely. He wants somebody to play with.  
There are no siblings and will never be, he understands that.  
He doesn't want friends either, where would he find any that would be worthy of him after all?  
(He's a Celestial after all. He has the light.)

He wants a pet.

Ego is a Celestial. He gets whatever he wants.  
Peter is a Celestial. He should also get whatever he wants.  
Peter is also a child. He knows how to whine and to beg and to be annoying and pitiful.  
Ego is a parent. He never stands a chance.

So Ego leaves and Peter is all alone on the planet that's at once the body of his sole surviving parent and the tomb of his countless siblings.  
He calls Yondu.

 _Just in case, Yondu had said. Had_ insisted. _Had he known? Had he guessed? Thousands of fragile little skulls and bones and where did they come from? Peter wants to ask, he never wants to know, and when Yondu comes, without a delay, without asking first for compensation or a reason why now, after two years, Peter just stands and stares._

Yondu comes and plays a game.  
Peter waits and is ready for it.

When Yondu asks why Peter needs a way off-planet, Peter thinks back on years of unkind words, he thinks of bullies, he thinks of Ego and everything out there that's not a part of the Celestial.

His lips wobble, he sniffs, his eyes are shiny and moist; it's obvious that Peter's trying to be strong after everything Ego said to him, how he was weak and useless, a savage, a Terran, a backwater-hick that lost its fascination two seasons ago. Even the memory of Peter's mother wasn't enough to sway Ego.

Peter has to go.

Yondu isn't convinced but he doesn't have to be. It's just a game after all.  
It's just important that it is played at all.

 _Peter has lived all his life on Earth on hope and dreams. He told of absent fathers making TV shows, exploring the stars, having the time of their lives and thinking fondly of him. He dreamed of healthy moms and bright futures ahead. He believed in justice and fairness and protecting the weak. He's a bullshitter, always was. He knows another one of his kind when he sees one and Yondu does too. There's a certain comfort on being in good company for once._

Yondu asks why he should take Peter in and this answer is even easier. Yondu gave it to him word for word once, when he was speaking with Kraglin about the little Terran they picked up and his possible uses for thievery. He wasn't aware the little "ankle-biter" had been hiding in a nearby vent after one of the more eventful run-ins with the rest of the crew. (Yondu totally was aware. Peter knows it, too, but, alas, _the_ _game_ …)

Yondu humpfs and haahs and grumbles. He threatens a bit.  
Then they are off and the planet Ego vanishes behind them like a bad dream you never quite wake up from (Peter liked shiny blue Terra better. It looked innocent and fresh, with more secrets of the pleasant kind.).

Peter was successful, he has gotten away.

 _He knows he can never stop running again._

…

Settling into life as a Ravager is hard.

There are still screams and threats and tunnel chases, teeth and claws and blaster fire, but Peter grits his teeth and bears it, because the true nightmare (or at least most of it) he left behind.

Gone are the soft beds and delicious food; it's hard mattresses and unrecognizable grub instead.  
No more games, no more running free. He does chores and cleans stuff, he gets scolded for every single mistake and sometimes he gets cuffed around the head even if he did everything correctly and sometimes, once in a blue moon, somebody actually teaches him something useful.

Peter-the-child wants to cry and rage at the unfairness of it all.  
Peter-the-grown-up reminds him that it could be so much worse and so they endure.

They endure – _Peter_ endures – and he slowly learns to see the silver lining to everything.  
It creeps some of the other Ravagers out (Yondu thinks it is down-right unhealthy.) but what do they know?  
(It could be _So. Much. Worse…_ )

So Peter grows, Peter works and Peter listens and learns.  
And it turns out that there's so much to learn.  
There's a whole universe out there and every star in it shines on something new.

Peter's father once took a look at that and was appalled. Peter's reaction is more like "Woah!"  
Dozens of species on the Eclector alone. Hundreds in the first trade post they stop at.  
And there's no end in sight.

It's wild and utter chaos, colorful and loud, scary and exhilarating and Peter wants to see it all.  
So many smells, so many sounds, so many sights…  
Ego's fishbowl of a planet, full of curiosities an indulgent father placed in his offspring's path , seems like nothing in comparison.  
Peter doesn't understand how anybody could ever wish to destroy that.

The other Ravagers notice his enthusiasm and are amused. They answer his every question.  
The other Ravagers get sick of his enthusiasm and are annoyed. They throw things at him.  
Peter doesn't care (Sometimes they throw new things. Things they just picked up in the port and so Peter has something new to poke and prod.). He takes his enthusiasm and curiosity and optimism and uses them to recreate himself.

Peter-of-Earth was angry, sad and miserable. His only home was gone and he didn't even hold her hand in the end.  
Peter-of-Ego was happy, thoughtless and doomed. He dreamed of stars even when wide awake without ever waking up at all. Until he did (Waking up _hurt_!) and then he couldn't get away fast enough.  
Peter-the grown-up knows nothing but survival. He's a quiet and mistrustful thing that's always watching hidden behind little Peter's eyes. He knows that they are far from safe and that they are done for the moment they stop long enough for Ego to find them.  
Peter-Starlord is going to be better than them all. He's going to be happy but careful, curious but guarded, optimistic but clever. He will have his mother's cheerful smile and his father's charming wit and both their (oh-so-different) thirst for life. Peter-Starlord is going to see the universe and he will love every minute of it.

Unfortunately Peter-Starlord will need a spaceship in order to see the universe.  
A blaster may be useful, too.  
And training how to fly a spaceship. And how to navigate. And how to shoot said blaster.  
Fortunately, Yondu is ready to help.

 _It's strange, actually._

Peter's father played ball with him and chased him through tall, reddish grass. He hugged him and laughed and told him that he was proud of him almost daily. Peter's father gave him a planet to play on and laid the universe down before his feet.

Yondu slaps him upside the head and yells at him for messing up which switch is which. He's far more likely to trip Peter than to hug him and he cheats at absolutely every game ever. He takes whatever he wants and makes Peter do punishment detail when he dares to protest and then dangles Peter's Walkman in front of his face until Peter successfully steals it back. And then punishes him for _that_.

But he's also making sure that Peter gets fed at the end of every day and that nobody else picks on him to the degree that Yondu himself does. He looks proud when Peter hits the bulls-eye, even when he doesn't say it out loud. Yondu gives him his first ship and his first blaster and teaches him everything he needs to know, even if his teaching methods leave something to be desired.

Yondu gets Peter out of every trouble Peter gets himself into (And laughs afterwards, and points out every single thing he did wrong. In front of the entire crew.).

 _It's strange actually, but while Ego will always be Peter's father, Yondu is his actual_ dad _…_

(Peter will never tell him that.)

( _Ever._ )

…

So Peter-Starlord gets older and taller and adds daring and dashing and dreamy to his idea of himself.  
He learns how to think fast and talk faster and wishes sometimes it were the other way around.  
He learns how to shoot and how to fly and how to steal and how to flirt and he makes good use of all of his numerous talents (Particularly the flirting. Flirting is fun.).

And he learns how to use the light.

(Not right away, of course.  
For a long time after his flight, he's too afraid to call his sparks, too disgusted by what it means.  
Perhaps Ego can track him through it, he reasons, he would put everybody in danger, he tell himself, it's not _fair_ to have this kind of power, he insists, but in the end, it's mostly fear keeping his hands dark and hollow.  
But the universe is a vast and harsh place and it turns out that even minor gods need every advantage they can get in the face of its everyday casual cruelty.

Strangely enough, this makes Peter feel better.)

Calling the light is harder this far away from Ego, but Peter manages it after a while (Besides, the harder it is, the farther away Ego is, and that means Peter is safe here, on the Eclector, always in transit and never in the same place twice in a few months at least.).  
Sparks turn into mist turn into streaming starlight just like his father had shown him half a lifetime ago. It's pretty and beautiful and like out of a dream (or a nightmare).

Peter has no idea what to do with it.

(Back on Ego, he wanted, he willed and it happened.  
Here, he scrunches his nose, he bites his lips, he thinks really hard – and nothing.  
Just his inbuilt nightlight of liquid starshine, showing him the grimy walls of his quarters in all their non-existent glory.)

He forms a ball from it (He can still do this much at least.) and throws it around a bit, remembering sand and grass and silvery ponds. The memory of deep, delighted laughter morphs into the bright, bell-like giggles of his mother and the dusty-sweet smell of Ego's plains turns into the smoke of a campfire once upon a warm summer-night.

They'd made s'mores, he remembers; back when everything had been still alright and his mother healthy and full of life.  
They'd made s'mores and counted the stars and Mum had told him about all the constellations and the gods tied to their stories (Maybe having a simple god as a parent would have been better than a Celestial, who knows?).

He misses her so much. He misses everything. The summer-heat and Missouri and the smoke biting in his eyes and the stories and the music and the chocolaty goodness of s'mores under a sky full of distant stars.

It's been quite some time since Peter last cried, but in this moment, hidden safely away in his quarters with nobody the wiser, he does. He closes his eyes and pretends that he's home, his _real_ home, and that his mum is just out of sight, getting a drink or something.  
He shoves his headphones over his ears to drown out the sounds of the ship and buries his nose in one of his t-shirts that slightly caught fire last week (Don't ask!) and hugs his troll-doll to his chest like it's one of the neighbor's new kittens over for a cuddle.  
The only thing missing is taste.

 _He still remembers the taste, even if others have long since faded from his mind._  
 _Ask him what an apple tasted like and Peter would come up blank, but chocolate?_ _  
_  
 _He remembers sweetness and smoothness and stickiness and how hard and cold bars splintered and broke into pieces and how they finally melted on fingers and tongue alike. How it seemed to brighten everything up somehow and chased the sadness away and if only for a little while. Peter remembers chocolate bars and hot chocolate in winter and his Mum laughing at him when he denied stealing the last cookie with the evidence smeared all over his face._

Light blooms, silver swirls.  
The chocolate bar forming in his hands is almost not a surprise.

(The key to repeating the feat is, though.  
There's a certain trick to it, more instinct than thought, like when Yondu taught him how to whistle.  
How strange, that in the end all his parents help him to learn how to shape the energies of the universe…)

(He gets too exhausted before he manages to make himself sick on newly created chocolate bars.  
Shaping the energies of the universe is _hard_ …)

…

He's almost an adult (Yondu disagrees.) when he's finally allowed off the Eclector unsupervised and for a longer period of time.  
Peter almost bursts with excitement because _FREEDOM!_ and so much to see, so much to do in such a short time.

He's young, he's charming, he's good-looking and he's figured out by now that flirting is just the tip of the iceberg.  
This world is his for the taking. Its inhabitants won't know what will hit them!

It… kind of doesn't work out this way.

Peter is young and charming and good-looking.  
He's also _Terran_ and apparently that's not just a derogatory term in Ravager-circles. It _really_ means backwater-hick and savage. _Exotic_ , if somebody tries to be nice about it.

In the best case, people simply look at him and don't care. But if somebody sniffs out just _where_ he's from, their looks turn into either disgust or pity. Oh, they are also _fascinated_ by him, all right, but then a train wreck's also fascinating – a colorful _insect_ is fascinating – as long as you don't have to actually touch it.

(Peter could tell them about the universe full of a billion stars he still senses sometimes in the back of his mind. He could tell them about being Superman and about his father-the-planet, his father-the-god. He could tell them of his light and how it's even better than the Force sometimes.

He doesn't.

Peter has been a lot of things in his life and he plans on being even more, but one thing he will never be is a bully. Exotic and savage may be bad, but they are vastly preferable to actual _fear_.)

Peter learns to work with it instead.

He was always a loud child, a mouthy child, he never knew when to shut up.  
Where others would try to curb this bad habit, he decides to actually turn it up a few degrees.  
He boasts and he jokes and he laughs louder than everybody else. He demands attention left, right and center. He flirts outrageously with everyone and everything, he tells tall tales, he lets out his natural bullshitter whenever and wherever he can. He put his foot in his mouth and plows right on as if nothing happened. And he gets away with it.

Because naturally he doesn't know any better. He's just a _Terran_ , after all.

(Peter is exotic and a savage and he has a fool's sacred freedom. Some things are apparently the same everywhere.)

It would be funny if it weren't so sad. It would be sad if it weren't so funny.  
But well, at least it's useful.

He's constantly underestimated this way and while everybody is busy staring at the walking, talking joke running around (Look at me, don't look at me.), nobody is paying attention to anything else (See what I did there? Of course, you didn't…).

After a while, people even forget that he's Terran, too blinded by the sheer force of his _personality_ to care. He learns (and steals) lots of interesting things this way and finally earns enough to wheedle a _real_ ship out of Yondu.

 _The first night on his own in the Milano, he lays awake and stares into the darkness of his new bunk. It's quiet in a way that has become utterly foreign and the knowledge that he's_ all alone _out here threatens to crush his chest in. Everybody is light-years away…_ _  
_  
 _He's really Peter Pan now, a real Lost Boy, all on his own, his parents dead or far, far away._ _  
_  
 _But as awesome as the Milano is, she makes a rather poor Tinkerbell._  
 _He wishes he had a K.I.T.T. instead. K.I.T.T. at least could speak…_

 _…_

(Does that make Yondu Captain Hook?)

…

Peter continues to grow (not to grow up, he's already grown up, he's never going to grow up) and he continues to run.

It's easier now on his own.  
He never stays anywhere longer than for a few days, hopping from planet to planet to space station to Eclector and back again. Sometimes he follows orders, sometimes he does missions and other times he follows the stars his father once kindled in his mind.

That's how he finds the spores.

They are everywhere, it seems, on every planet he visits.  
He doesn't always sense them right away but they are all creatures of Ego, in a way, and like calls to like.  
They are pretty, in a way, colorfully luminous and deceptively fragile. They remind Peter of jellyfish in all their poisonous glory.  
They look tiny and innocent and one day, if Ego catches up to Peter, they will swallow the worlds whole and reshape them in Ego's image.

It takes some work but in the end Peter manages to rip them out of the ground, roots and all, and they melt into his light as if they had never even existed. And every time, one of the stars he still sometimes faintly sees in his mind vanishes.

(It gets easier to call his light afterwards and it seems stronger. Not a lot, but…

Maybe, Peter thinks. Maybe, one day, I'll be strong enough to stop my father once and for all.)

Peter continues to run.

He follows orders, does missions and enjoys himself on hundreds of planets his father would rather see wiped out.  
And whenever he finds one, he absorbs a spore into his skin and grows just a tiny bit stronger.

(Later, much later, he will be too exhausted to appreciate the irony that one of the first worlds he saved from death-by-Ego was Hala…)

…

He follows the spores to Xandar.

When he first sees the bright sphere in front of his ship, he actually hesitates for a moment. He's been on a lot of planets by now, but from all the stories he's heard, Xandar is actually the closest to Earth so far. Sure, they are ruled by some weird mix of military and police in a way that would probably give most Terrans the creeps (At least he thinks so. It's been a while since he last thought about Earth and strangely enough he's better at remembering fiction than facts.) and its people are a melting pot of lots of species (The half-remembered American in him should feel right at home.) but the vegetation is mostly green, the water blue, the cities clean and made of glass and metal and the Nova Corps are the more or less grudgingly acknowledged "Good Guys" in this part of the galaxy.

For a moment, he wonders what Xandar-the-Celestial would look like. At first he envisions a silver-haired general, stern-faced, distant and unapproachable. But then the vision fuses with the hazy memories of his grandfather and the general gains exhausted lines around his mouth and warmth hiding deep in his eyes. Suddenly, Xandar doesn't seem so scary anymore.

(Sometimes he thinks guiltily of Earth, of laughing, bright-haired Terra. He knows there's a spore there and he knows he should do something about it. But… he _can't_! He just _can't_ , and it's not even because his father would suspect him to go there first. It's just… _not possible_ for him to return. Maybe one day, but not right now. Not anytime soon, in fact.)

(Terra's light would be golden, he thinks. Golden and warm like the first sun in spring.)

Xandar is a lot like Earth, but it helps that Peter grew up in the country and is more familiar with sprawling farmland and woods than true cities.  
Xandar is _nothing_ like Earth and is new and exciting instead, all clean lines and clean streets and clean people running around and not caring a bit about the gawking Terran in their midst.

Peter loves it, because this is how life should be, this is what every science fiction comic ever promised him. It also leaves him feeling more lost than ever because after years in Ravager-care he has no idea anymore what to do with so much civilization.

Sure, he has been on _officially_ civilized planets before, but mostly to the seedier parts. (On the first glance, Xandar seems to be seriously lacking on those. Not that he believes it. Give him some time and he will find them. There's always a darker side to anything, he learned that the hard way.) But even on his few forays in the _nicer_ parts of every planet that came before, there always seemed to be something lacking. Maybe it's their uniformity, the prevalence of one single species above all others and how the members of the minorities seemed just the slightest bit tense, instinctively aware that they were foreign, alien in a way that could have serious consequences should something go wrong.

Here, he doesn't get that feeling, everybody seems to feel perfectly at home and it throws him for a loop.  
He covers it up with an extra swagger in his steps and a grin so bright it should be blinding (Peter wonders for a moment. Could he do that? An idle thought to follow up on later…).

He wanders around and plays the tourist, collecting information along the way.  
Naturally Yondu gave him a crash-course on every major player around and any planet of possible interest, so he has at least an idea of the dos and don'ts of Xandarian law. But like with everything there's a trick to dealing with every society, so he keeps his eyes and ears open and learns.

(It's either that or messing up somewhere along the way and if Peter messes up, Yondu's sure to _explain_ to him just what he did do wrong.  
At length. In front of the entire crew.  
 _Again_ …)

A few days and Peter knows how to blend in, just like all the better Ravagers do. Move a certain way, have no care in the world, don't act as if you have anything to hide and there you go:  
Just another guy going for a stroll.  
Ravager-gear? No sir, just junker-fashion.  
A bit on the wild side, true, but harmless fun.  
To impress the ladies, nothing more.

A wink, a grin, and he walks on, conducting his shady business right then and there in bright daylight, with no one the wiser.

Apparently that's the way it goes on Xandar, at least as long as you're at least a middle class criminal and not too stupid to pull it off. The Nova Corps is too busy keeping the general peace and fighting a millenia-long war to care much about everything but outright murder. As long as you keep your head down and don't force the Corps to actually pay attention, you can pull off practically everything you want.

(And if you don't, you tend to… _vanish_. The Kyln, some people whisper.  
Peter doesn't want to find out more.

Welcome to the darker side.  
Peter's sure, if he were to truly look for it, he would find more.)

Mission accomplished he turns to his more personal goals.  
And runs into a snag. Naturally.

Here's the thing:

Usually the spores are well away from whatever passes as civilization on their planets. Not too far off, but out of the way, hard to find.  
Wouldn't do for somebody to accidentally step on them or something, after all (Peter had amused himself with some visions about somebody drenching one in weed-killer before.).

Here's the other thing, or more like _things_ , plural:

One, Xandarians are thorough.  
Peter would call some members of their society even anal-retentive.

So naturally they mapped their Whole. Fucking. Planet.

Over the course of doing that they stumbled over the spore and squealed in glee.  
Alien contact, how _fascinating_! (That was quite some time ago. Before they rose to one of the major powers of the galaxy.)  
They poked a bit, they prodded a bit, they noticed that the spore wilted when they threatened to actually take some samples and almost lost their collective minds in panic (Don't kill the alien! Ahhh!).

End of the story, they left it alone.

Two, some time after that the newly minted Nova Empire decided they needed a new capital.  
Something planned and plotted and orderly (Anal-retentive…). Something to show everybody else the glory of their new way of life.

And apparently the best place for that was right next to the little plot of land the spore was situated on.

Given that they were still unwilling to harm the alien (Ahh!) existing peacefully on their planet for all these years (If only they knew.), they marked a large space surrounding it as taboo for urbanization and finally declared the whole area a nature reserve and walled it in.

Three, centuries later the whole area was covered by a giant skydome and well protected, open only to scientists and special guests of the Empire who wanted to admire the beauty of Xandar in all its natural glory and see the famous little alien plant for themselves. (Apparently the spore still valiantly resisted any attempt to analyze it by… aggressive preemptive wilting or something. Peter wasn't quite sure on the details, but it still fascinated biologist and xenobiologists even now and made it a national treasure.)

All that meant that Peter's first attempt at getting to the spore to get rid of it once and for all ended before it really began.

(Fortunately he had had maybe one or three little drinks before he'd tried his luck. Just for courage.  
Thankfully Xandar's charitableness towards fragile little aliens also applied to misplaced Terrans and once the Corpsman who'd caught him got a whiff of the smell of alcohol on his breath, he decided to err on the side of caution and let him off with an admonishment not to do something like this again.)

(Who knew how much alcohol a Terran could actually tolerate, after all? Wouldn't do if somebody actually dared the poor inebriated thing to do something it probably didn't even realize was wrong…)

The second time didn't work out much better.

(He got caught by the same Corpsman.  
Thankfully Peter had learned from the first time and had made sure to be slightly tipsy. After a bit of hesitation he was let go.  
Sometimes he wondered if Yondu was the only one immune to his "sad-pathetic-Terran"-routine…)

(It turned out he wasn't.)

The third time, Peter somehow ended up without pants and in the custody of not only the by now familiar Corpsman Dey but also a decidedly unimpressed, unfamiliar Millenian who took one look at the sorry sight in front of his eyes and decided that he was done with the night in general and Peter in particular.

(Peter still got away with a black eye.  
Instead of making him do time, Corpsman Dey sat him down, pushed the local equivalent of a coffee and something to eat in his hands and told him sternly about the dangers of alcohol, the dangers of peer pressure, the dangers of breaking the law and the collective danger of Peter's bad life-choices so far.)

(Dey was _good_ at this, Peter had to admit. All earnest and worried and "think about your future".  
He didn't even seem all that angry. More like disappointed.  
Peter hadn't felt this small in quite some time.)

(It didn't stop Peter for long though.)

The fourth time, Peter took another route to get into the reserve.  
This time, Peter got creative.

The less said about it, the better.

(This time the Nova Corps didn't catch him. Not really.  
The Gramosians kind of held a grudge, though. And had weird, unfair laws that applied even when visiting other planets.)

After that debacle, Peter decided that it would be prudent to postpone his attempts at saving Xandar until a future better time and to return to the Eclector to make sure that no Ravagers ever learned about what exactly happened.

(They still did. Surprisingly enough, Yondu got over his newest little escapade rather quickly.  
Kraglin on the other hand was known to still cackle about it even years later…)

…

Years pass and Peter is happy.  
Space is vast and harsh and wonderful, still full of new things just waiting to be discovered.  
He sees new sights and meets new people and he just can't get enough of it.

Years pass and Peter is content.  
Life as a Ravager is violent and harsh but Peter has his own ship and can come and go whenever he wants.  
He's free and unfettered and nobody relies on him just as he doesn't have to rely on anybody else.

Years pass and Peter is… beginning to realize that there might be something wrong with him.

(Grow up, they tell him.  
Why don't you finally grow up?  
Grow up, will you?  
Why can't you behave like an adult for once?)

Peter meets hundreds of new people but they all tire of him quickly.  
He's fun, he's games, he's a quick mouth and a quick wit, an easy smile and easy looks, he's great to have around – for a day or night or two.

But for more than that?  
Even those willing to look past Peter being "Terran" get annoyed over time.

(Can't you take anything serious, they ask.  
This is not a game!  
This isn't the time for one of your jokes!  
Why do you have to be so immature?)

They look at him and want to see an adult.  
They look at him and see a child instead.  
A fool.  
An idiot.

And Peter smiles and laughs, he jokes and he is the joke, because he is the child that never grew up and the grown-up remembering bones and stars and a thousand reflections and deep down he hurts because he _can't_ and he _is_ and he has _no idea_ how to explain how torn in two, in three, in four pieces he feels sometimes.

He's Peter-Starlord, he's Peter-the-grown-up, and that should be more than enough and still too much – but he's also still Peter-of-Earth, mourning his mother, and Peter-of-Ego, yearning for his father, and sometimes it all clashes and crashes and all comes tumbling down and the fool's mask (cherished and despised in equal measure) is all that he can cling to by his fingertips.

(It doesn't matter anyway, he tells himself.  
It doesn't matter if he sometimes wishes that he could change things, grow up, leave the fool's mask behind and recreate himself _again_ , maybe in a fully functional adult this time. Somebody responsible. Somebody other people respect and want to keep around.

In the end, Peter is also Peter-the-Celestial.  
And Peter-the-Celestial has to keep running. Has to keep leaving.  
Has to keep leaving people behind, because staying and stability and predictability would mean Ego finally catching up to him and the end of all those he would love to love.)

So Peter smiles and laughs, he jokes and he is the joke, and sometimes, when he lies alone at night in the Milano, he plays around with the light coming out of his fingertips and wonders if _this (_ Wrongness, loneliness, uniqueness?) is the reason why his father decided to eradicate all other life.

To fit in, to be right, to just _be_ without having to explain himself, without having to think about possible explanations for himself.

Peter smiles and laughs, he jokes and he is the joke, and sometimes, when he lies alone at night in the Milano, he plays around with the light coming out of his fingertips and wonders if it wouldn't be easier if he could just _create_ somebody capable of understanding him and his situation…

It's a nice dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Years have passed and Peter had more than enough time to learn the possibilities and limits of his gift.

He's a Celestial, a god – but a minor one, and while some things are merely hard, other things have proven to be downright impossible.

…

It was the chocolate of all things that first made him think.

Perfect, tasty chocolate.

Sweet and smooth and sticky. Hard and cold turning into warm, melted goodness.  
Always shaped the exact same way. Always looking, feeling, smelling, tasting like the perfect memory of what chocolate should be like.

One bar the exact copy of the other.

It got Peter thinking. If it looks like chocolate, feels like chocolate, smells and tastes like it – but you have absolutely no idea what its actual molecular structure looks like – is it still chocolate in the end?

(He has never quite found the courage to test what it actually is he's creating.  
So far eating it hasn't killed Peter yet and that is good enough for him.)

(He's been refraining from freely sharing it around since his little _enlightenment_ , though…)

(Just to be sure.)

Once he started thinking, he just couldn't stop: What could he actually do with the light?

What followed was a long and (very) exhausting period full of trial and error.

Peter found out that the easiest thing to affect was actual energy.  
Kinetic or potential, electric or radiant, whatever form it took, energy wanted to change, to _make things happen_ and only needed a nudge, a thought in the right direction to do whatever he wanted it to do. Influencing it didn't take much strength and just some creativity and will, then it just bend to Peter's whims and stayed that way.

Unfortunately, energy usually was tied into (surrounded and restrained by) matter.  
And to influence matter was a lot harder.

Creating not-quite-things (or more like _recreating_ things like he _remembered_ they _should appear_ ) was actually the easiest part.  
Take some atoms (or maybe even protons, neutrons and electrons, Peter wasn't quite sure) from your surroundings, add some of his light and tadaa, instant not-quite-what-he-wanted-but-close-enough-thing.

Correctness of molecular composition notwithstanding.

(But unfortunately molecular composition was kind of important, because things that _appeared_ right but were fundamentally _wrong_ on such a deep level tended to break at inopportune moments, to behave in ways they really, really shouldn't or to poison people other than Peter himself.)

But to create something like it _should be_ and not how it superficially appeared?  
Pretty much impossible.

You had to know a thing inside out down to the molecular level for that, to have the patience and strength to methodically build it up starting from its smallest parts and Peter just couldn't do that.

He lacked the knowledge, he lacked the concentration, he lacked the overreaching consciousness and planning skills he would need to keep track of so many things happening at once and affecting each other and even if he had all these things and even the slightest idea how to even start, he also lacked the pure power for it. He would probably sap himself dry long before he had created even the basic structure of an apple slice.

To influence or change already existing matter actually fell somewhere in the middle.

It had been easy as long as the matter had been part of Ego (but then again, everything had seemed easy on Ego), but in the rest of the universe it got harder the more complex the structure of whatever he wanted to affect was.

Changing the color of his jacket?  
Doable if inadvisable because it simply took to too much of Peter's strength, at least if done in one go.

Changing the material?  
Once again limited by Peter's understanding of the molecular composition.

Fixing any holes or tears that cropped up from time to time?  
No problem at all as long as Peter could either convince the material to simply… reconnect where needed or some of the surrounding atoms (Neutrons, electrons, protons?) to mimic the cloth or at least something close to it.

(It didn't always work, though. Fortunately people out here had found their own ways to make stuff durable. Otherwise Peter's walkman and cassette would have been nothing but useless mementos a long time ago.)

So Peter, the Celestial, the minor god isn't quite as all-powerful as he believed himself to be.

He's surprisingly alright with that.

Peter's far from stupid and great at improvising and making things work.

He adds an extra oomph or two to his weapons and equipment, sneaks some hidden surprises into his gear, improves things and keeps the repair costs low wherever he can and pays a pretty penny at the most respectable illegal medical center he can find to get the most accurate idea of his overall biology he can.

(Even if he didn't have plans, it's only prudent to do so. Peter's the _only_ Terran around. He _needs_ to know how he works, what parts do what, what he should avoid doing and what can kill him. And Peter _needs_ to know where others can find this information should anything ever happen to him and he needs help.)

Peter may not be Superman any longer, not so far from Ego, but after long, long study sessions he works out how to give himself an extra edge against all those species far stronger and faster than him. He learns and tries and trains and in the end he figures out how to give himself some speed, some strength when he really needs it, how to improve his muscles and tendons and nerves just the slightest bit for the short time that may decide between life and death, how to stop heavy bleeding and knit bones long enough to get to medical help, how to convince his cells to do what he needs them to do even if not always the way they actually should… (And how to undo the mess in the end, how to set everything back to its natural default state. Very important that.)

It's the hardest thing Peter ever had to learn. It's probably also one of the most important.

(He also thinks that he never will quite finish learning. Not before the day arrives that he hasn't quite learned enough and dies as a result.)

It also proves one thing to him:  
Creating life, especially sentient life, is nothing but a dream.  
A nice dream, but a dream nonetheless.

Far too complex.  
Far too many parts and nuances he just doesn't understand.  
Far too many things to take into consideration and working in concert.

Peter's pretty sure not even Ego can create actual life.

 _Maybe it's not just the complexity of it all._ _  
 _Maybe there's more to life than molecules and electric impulses._  
 _More than energy and matter.__

 _ _And maybe it takes a major God for that.__

 _Peter thinks back to red fields and pond weeds and glowing jellyfish-spores and how all those things are nothing but parts of Ego in the end. Nothing truly independent. Noting truly, separately alive._ _  
 _Just offshoots of Ego in a different shape.__

 _For anything more, even Ego needed the true and tried method._

 _Maybe this inability to create life, to_ understand _life completely is what has truly driven Ego to his plans of destruction._ _  
 _He simply doesn't want to waste the time or effort to understand something so deeply complicated, yet at the same time he can't accept his own shortcomings.__

 _Maybe one of the biggest differences between Peter and his father is that Peter_ doesn't _have to understand something to enjoy it._ _  
 _He just does and his own life is so much richer for it.__

…

Years pass and Peter fails at growing up all the way, the proper way.

He flits from place to place.  
He never stays anywhere longer than for a few days, hopping from planet to planet to space station to Eclector and back again.  
Sometimes he follows orders, sometimes he does missions and other times he follows the stars his father once kindled in his mind.

He has faint acquaintances in every port, meaningless one-night-stands on every planet, stable roots exactly nowhere, not really, not in any way that matters.

And whenever it gets too much, when the universe seems to large and empty and full at the same time, if he yearns for a stop and a familiar voice _not_ yelling orders in his ear, if his womanizing and planet-hopping threatens to remind him too badly of his father, he finds a bar and settles down and drinks as much of the worst swill he can find as the bartender will let him.

(It's impressive what a Terran can survive, the witnesses think.  
Peter wonders sometimes, when he's really down and done with the universe, if he's surviving it because he's a Celestial and can take it or because he's a Celestial and his father will never ever let him die…)

(Peter never actively tries to find out, though.  
He's got his thirst for life from both sides of the family and there's still too much to see, to discover, to experience to try and call it quits.)

 _Later on he will never quite be able to recall just what caused the memory to resurface, if it was a Shiar's feathery head, neon lights throwing a halo around another drinker or just the right kind of music when he felt especially maudlin and nostalgic._

 _But suddenly, from one moment to the next, he half-remembers the rich sound of church bells and the scent of his mother's best dress and he hears again the old, solemn stories about a favorite son, full of light and more powerful than any other, rebelling against his father and suffering for it._ __

 _ _He remembers forbidden fruits and good and evil and why sometimes wanting to know leads you right out of paradise and down into hell.__

Peter sets his empty drink down, stares at his light-less, hollow hands, and then he laughs and laughs and laughs until he cries and gets thrown out of the bar on his ass.

Even lying in the gutter he's still laughing, still crying until he's hiccupping so hard he almost knocks himself out.

 _Once he calms down again he will pick himself up, wander over into the better part of the city and chat a girl up._ _  
 _They will smile and laugh and have fun and Peter will make himself forget. He will be so successful at forgetting, he won't even remember that she's there the next morning, let alone her name (It will be awkward, but Peter's an expert at awkward, he's had practice enough…).__

 _But for now Peter is content to huddle into the gutter and laugh/cry so hard it hurts._


	3. Chapter 3

It _is_ awkward. _Boy_ , is it awkward.

But at least Bereet is the forgiving sort and Peter has _great_ new memories of one bunch of assholes realizing too late that Peter's extra-special plasma balls are more than just pretty nightlights. No sir, once he's done tweaking them, they actually make quite a big boom.

(Their faces when it blew up almost make up for them not recognizing the great Starlord on sight.)

Unfortunately this event remains the high point of his day.  
Everything afterwards is one giant mess of bounties and bounty hunters and strange green-skinned beauties trying to alternately kill or rob him and, most importantly, the Broker refusing to buy the goddamn orb-of-too-much-trouble.

(And seriously, _what is it_ with the orb that even _Yondu_ suddenly flips his shit and wants it badly enough to put a bounty on Peter's head? It's not as if Peter's never stolen from him before – or Yondu from him – and it wouldn't be the first time Peter's threatening to leave only to come crawling back a few months later. It's not as if he has anywhere else to go if the longing for whatever sorry excuse for stability and familiarity the Ravagers are offering gets too great to endure…)

A year ago their little brawl would have probably ended either in bloodshed or in a bar.

Now, though, Xandar's newly at peace and the Nova Corps have suddenly remembered that they have actual police work to do. And as if to make up for a century of negligence and a generally lax attitude regarding the law, they seem to have decided that now is the time to come down hard on anybody caught breaking it.

Peter's more than alright with that, really – the other guys are a bunch of assholes anyway – but somehow he gets thrown into the same pot as them and finds himself on a one-way-trip to the infamous Kyln.

He could have lived without the experience, really.

(He's actually pretty sure that it wasn't Millenian Dey's doing.  
Dey seems to be more amused by Peter and his antics than anything and belongs, at worst, to the ever-growing "Why can't you just grow up, Quill?"-faction.

That Denarian, though, that Peter caught just the barest glimpse of before he was shoved into the next room over to get his mugshot taken? Peter's pretty sure that was Mr. Not-impressed! from the incident a few years ago.

Looks like he never quite forgot nor forgave the no-pants-part of the night. Who knew the guy could hold such a grudge?)

Anyway, the Kyln is all that Peter was promised and he really, _really_ regrets that _now_ is the time he decided to kind-of, sort-of, more-or-less-accidentally break with Yondu and his bunch of merry men. Otherwise he actually would have a hope of getting out of here again and some weight to throw around (without falling back on glowing hands and hoping that he finds a way to be gone before Ego arrives.).

Without it, he's kind of fucked – almost literally in fact.

(It doesn't help that his worst offence is "Fraud" while everybody else here seems to have at least one count of "Grievous Bodily Harm" or something equally serious on their rap sheet. Really, Peter almost feels ashamed for the lack of color-coded marks on his pants. It's insulting to every not-so-honest thug in here.)

(On the other hand, Peter's seriously wondering if maybe the problem with his reputation – or lack thereof – is that he's just never getting caught. But if prisons like the Kyln are the alternative…? Decisions, decisions…)

Fortunately Rocket and his giant plant-friend seem to be actually attached to their future pay-check and Peter's has enough experience with making the best of bad situations to just nod and go with it (Honestly, that's how he's lived most of his life by now anyway.).

And the two bounty-hunters aren't even all that bad once he gets to know them.  
Groot is kind of quiet, Rocket is loud enough to make more than up for it and they both are just as maladjusted to functioning in normal society as Peter is. It's positively heart-warming.

If he were anywhere else, Peter would buy them a drink.

As it is, he sticks to their sides like glue without it being too obvious and watches the prison life around him, learning how to fit in.

…

On the first glance, Gamora seems to hit the jackpot with her single cell and protective custody.

On second glance, single cells are traps just waiting to be sprung and suddenly Peter finds himself in the unenviable position of negotiating with a walking, talking boulder.

(He's beginning to notice a worrying trend of him jumping to the defense of green lifeforms.  
And here he thought he had escaped the black eyes and busted lips once he was away from those blasted frogs…)

Peter thinks fast and talks faster and this time he really wishes it would be the other way around because, wow, Drax the Destroyer really was created to be his nemesis.  
His endboss.  
His personal Kryptonite.

In the end, he has no idea how he and Gamora get out of it unscathed but apparently he has somehow signed them up for killing some guy called Ronan (He has still no idea who that is. Not really.). He will… deal with it, should he ever have to actually do something about this oath (How likely is that to happen?).

For now there are four billion units somewhere in his near future and three clashing personalities to wrangle into some kind of impromptu team to get out of this hellhole and on their way to a fortune.

(Four. Billion. Units.  
Suddenly he can understand why Yondu flipped his shit. Oops…)

One giant mess later (He's noticing another trend here.) his band of misfits has actually grown to include four, but at least he has his ship back. And his walkman.

As far as Peter is concerned, everything else, even four billion units, is nothing but a bonus.  
Sure, he won't say no to them, but his ship, his music and the street cred he'll get for breaking out of the _Kyln – the fucking KYLN –_ are already more than enough.

(Starlord, the first one to break out of the inescapable Kyln, taking along four other guys on his way out. How cool is that? Finally people will know of him.)

(Hopefully without ever learning about the part with the leg…)

The company leaves something to be desired, but hey, it's only temporary and it will be easy enough to lose them once he has his money.  
Heck, if he can steal the orb right under Gamora's nose, snatching the units should be child's play.

And, come to think of, he will need every unit he can get to repair whatever Rocket has done to his poor Milano.  
Seriously, who builds bombs in the middle of a ship?

(Okay, Peter does.  
But his bombs are made of energy and are things of highly deceptive beauty, not a pile of scrap made out of spare parts he might actually need later on. If his bombs threaten to explode, he just undoes whatever he did to them. If _Rocket's_ explode, it means "Sayonara, Starlord". )

(Or not. The jury is still out on that.)

Naturally, Gamora and Drax aren't helping at all, shouting and arguing and apparently stuck on a default-setting of "If it still twitches, hit it harder."

Peter can appreciate a good spot of violence as much as everybody else, but usually from a distance, with some popcorn and a drink in hand.  
In the end, his go-to-method to solve problems will always be talking first, shooting second, and if only because he needs the extra-time it buys him to figure out how to find the comfortable middle-ground between weak, fragile Terran and whatever a Celestial does to deal… not exactly with threats but things that annoy him.

Really, in the end, Groot's his favorite, hands down.

…

Knowhere... makes him feel sick.

Peter has never been here before, in fact, Yondu has made sure he stayed far away, and he's never been more grateful that the blue asshole put his foot down.

He wishes he was still oblivious to the giant head floating through space, the empty eyes and eternally gawping mouth.  
The sight alone makes him break into cold sweat and he can't help but wonder if…

Yeah, if what, actually?

If this was once another Celestial, another planet full of pseudo-life out to conquer the known universe?

If Peter's actually the only pint-sized Celestial out here, the first or only one of his kind, or if he will one day grow into something resembling the monster in front of him and he's staring at his future?

If there was once a body attached to the trailing spine, propelling a whole organism through the galaxies, searching for others of its kind?

If these are in fact the remains of his father, his true cranium before his brain decided to leave it behind and start anew inside a hull of stone and metal, hidden from whatever beheaded him by camouflaging as a simple planet?

(If there are really other Celestials out there – what exactly was his father so desperately looking for and why is he now trying to turn everything into extensions of himself?)

(What if Ego's not the worst that the universe has to offer? What if he's only the beginning?)

(And what if the thing that has beheaded that Celestial ever comes back?)

Thanks to all its lights and signs of inhabitation, the inside is actually better.  
Less disconcerting by sight alone, it's easier to forget what exactly he's walking in, but still Peter feels as if he's somewhere he really, _really_ doesn't want to be. There's a smell in the air, a feeling down in his bones, that's not exactly telling him to run for his life but makes it clear that this place is… _taboo_ in a way.

(If he doesn't keep his mind on the mission, all he can see are thousands of small, brittle bones in a long forgotten tomb.  
And it's the same, in a way, isn't it? More dead kin he never got to know.  
Who knows? Maybe this Celestial would have actually been decent.)

In the end, Peter does what he always does.  
He swallows his discomfort and deflects, distracts and acts as if he has no care in the world. He bullshits and brags and swaggers a bit and when they reach the meeting point he waits until nobody is looking and downs the biggest, nastiest drink he can find.

Afterwards, he feels better.  
Sure, now his fingertips are tingling and his head feels just the slightest bit woozy, but it's easier like this. The happy masses inside the bar, shouting at some stupid game or the other, are still a bit too much, but the outer gallery is nice and quiet and, most importantly, looking out at the surrounding nebula and not some part of Knowhere itself.

Having Gamora to himself is just a bonus.

 _A part of him listens to her story and wonders if he should tell her that he understands. If he should tell her about his own father and how he has found that once you start running you can never ever stop again. That Ronan and Thanos are the least of their problems and that somewhere out there a minor god is waiting patiently for the day he gets Peter in his hands and can reshape the universe in his image._

 _He doesn't._

 _Peter tells her about his mother instead._

Then, suddenly, the alcohol had time to work and somewhere inside his mind, there's a sign lighting up saying "One day since Peter Jason Quill got laid." Liquid courage makes him pay attention and act on the impulse.

Naturally, it goes badly.

(Peter just shrugs: As if that has ever stopped him before…)

After that, everything goes to shit. Again.

Apparently everybody has suddenly decided that it's time to share the sob stories around and Peter hates, _absolutely hates_ , the fact he feels a growing kinship to every single one of these idiots.

Dead families, shit dads out for the blood of innocents, people using other people however they see fit…

(When he first saw Rocket's back in the Kyln what shot through his head was his old protectiveness of everything smaller than him and his mother's old lectures of "Don't do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you", by now usually healthily mixed with Yondu's more pragmatic approach of "First do unto others…" – you get the gist.

But this? Created as a weapon without having a say in it?

It hits even closer to home.)

Peter's furious because he's pretty sure his great plan to cut and run just went up in smoke.

He just doesn't have the stomach to pull one over on these sad sacks. One billion units will be enough.  
And if not, he had been planning to find out if he can create something valuable – or at least something appearing close to it - for ages anyway.

(Ego thinks he is the only one capable of feeling true loneliness.  
He can't understand that in a way everybody is one of a kind and that everybody is painfully aware what it feels like to be completely on your own.

Peter does, maybe better than anyone else.)

…

Peter is officially done with Knowhere.

If the whole place doesn't already give him the creeps in general, Taneleer Tivan's little shop of horrors would be more than enough to send him running.

Especially because he knows that one wrong word could set him right alongside Groot on Tivan's official wish list.

So he stays uncharacteristically quiet and hangs back, hides behind Groot as well as he's able to and tries to keep his drink down.

(He really, really misses the depictions of space from his comics right now.  
Where everything was nice and shiny and _better_ than Terra, not So. Much. Worse!)

Really, between the alcohol in his bloodstream, the nervousness making his fingers sweaty and his general discomfort at being here at all and in the Collector's presence in particular, it should be no surprise at all that he lets the orb fall. But he picks it back up quickly enough (Yay!) and now the Collector is probably thinking him a bumbling fool. (Double-Yay!)  
Sometimes you have to take the small wins.

(Sometimes small wins count far more than big ones ever could.)

Then it gets worse. _Naturally_ it gets worse.

The moment Tivan opens the orb a wave of _something_ seems to surge through Peter.

 _It feels as if somebody suddenly ignited a fucking_ sun _in the middle of an empty universe, beckoning him closer with a promise of power, a promise of_ potential _just waiting to be used, to be_ unleashed _._

 _It sings its siren song to anybody capable of feeling it, whispering and tingling over their nerves and senses, luring them to just_ take a look, have a try, give it their best shot and perish!

Peter inhales sharply, he can feel his hair stay on end and he's at once suddenly stone-cold sober and slightly dizzy from the wellspring of energy barely kept in check just mere steps away from him. He doesn't even need to hear Tivan's little nightmare of a bedtime story to know that whatever happens from now on, as long as this thing, this _Infinity Stone_ is involved, it will only end in tears (in death, in destruction).

And there are _six_ of them…

Suddenly the threat of Ego looks like a joke in comparison.

(He just barely manages to pay attention to Tivan's story at all.  
Later on he will only remember the gist of it, together with a vague impression of "Hey, I think I know you. Who are you? I've never seen you before…" when he shudders at the memory of a giant humanoid shape destroying all life on Morag with a single touch of its staff and a surge of bright purple light.)

He notices too late that the Stone has lured another person into being its thrall, drawing her closer by her desires and fears and wishes to be more. To change the status quo, to finally be free and to have, just for once, nothing but _raw,_ _unbridled power_.

 _The Stone looks shiny and pure and beautiful, but Peter can feel the trap waiting for the unprepared, for those who just aren't capable of weathering the hidden storm just waiting to be unleashed._

The Krylorian touches the Stone.

 _The screams are horrible._

Gamora may be the one reacting first, getting both of them out of the way and in a sheltered place, but Peter is the one actually _feeling_ the energy cresting over them, licking at them in playful waves and coyly brushing against whatever sorry attempts Peter manages to shield and bend and guide it away in an effort to keep the both of them safe.

 _The screams never seem to end._

In the end, Tivan's little private zoo lies in shambles and they are still stuck with the Stone, now safely (Ha!) enclosed in the orb again.

Because really, what else can they do?

Peter wants absolutely nothing to do with it, wants to dropkick it to one end of the universe and run to the other, but now he's aware of it, had a _taste_ of it, he can _sense_ the Stone in all its questionable glory and you don't just leave something like _that_ just lying around and hope for the best.

 _He can still hear the screams…_

Peter desperately tries to find the silver-lining, because there has to be one somewhere, there has to be a way to go back to _normal_ , whatever fucked up version of it there is, but before he gets further than one last-ditch attempt to get money out of a job really, _really_ gone wrong, shit really, _really_ hits the fan.

He finally gets the chance to meet Ronan.

(He's surrounded by idiots.)

And Yondu has finally caught up to him.

(Peter's the biggest one of them all.)

 _For one moment, just one teeny, tiny moment, Peter kind of considers giving up. Crawling back to the Ravagers, accepting whatever punishment is his due and putting the whole mess surrounding the Stone in Yondu's capable and vastly more experienced hands._

 _But Yondu once thought it a good idea to trade in children –_ Ego's _children, destined to_ die – _and while Peter may have sort of forgiven, he_ never ever _forgot._

…

The ensuing chase ends in the middle of nowhere, right on the border between the atmosphere of Knowhere and the emptiness of space.

It's cold out here and silent, safe except for Rocket's voice squawking in his ear.

It's almost peaceful, in a way.

Peter wonders if this is the moment he will finally be able to find out if he can die.

He stares at Gamora's face, almost peaceful so close to death and for a moment he longs to join her. To give up, to give in and simply let others worry about the fate of the universe for once, he himself quietly drifting away, hopefully forever out of his father's reach.

(Don't they both, Gamora and him, deserve some kind of peace after the lives they've lived?)

But in the end he's Peter-Starlord (He's so much more than that.) and Peter-Starlord is meant to be an outlaw and a hero and he loves life more than anything and so he contacts Yondu, gives Gamora his mask to get at least some oxygen and warmth back into her body and hopes for the best.

 _He's more than just Peter-Starlord, he's also Peter-the-grown-up so used to fighting for survival he can't do anything else now, he's Peter-of-Earth who can't stand the thought of losing somebody else he's come to care about, he's Peter-of-Ego who just can't take the chance that this won't kill him, just freeze him until his father picks him up…_

 _He's also Peter-the-Celestial and that's what probably truly saves him in the end._

 _Because Peter-the-Celestial ignites a fire in his blood and drains his surroundings of whatever molecules he can find and changes them until he can filter the results directly through his skin into his body and keep himself alive and awake just a little bit longer that way._

Long enough for the Ravagers to pick him up.

(And boy, Yondu looks happy enough to save him, if only so that he can kill Peter himself instead…)

…

Peter is a big damn hero.  
Peter is a traitor.  
Peter is saved to live another day.  
Peter is about to die for stealing from his crew.  
Peter is really tired of this shit and would like some rest now, please.

Unfortunately that's not about to happen and after bullshitting his way out of the latest debacle (In the end, Yondu had time to cool off and is completely satisfied with simply yelling at him and who's the one getting weak now?) and gaining a small army in the process, he's now off to save Xandar with nothing but a bunch of assholes at his disposal and no idea how to go about it.

(Well, at least Rocket was thoughtful enough to return his ship to him and the Milano is still undamaged and in one piece.  
Silver-linings. Gotta concentrate on the silver-linings…)

Here he is now, the walking joke, the universe's most notorious loner (Though the others could probably give him a run for his money.), suddenly in charge of a group even less well-adjusted (What a novel and frankly scary concept.) than him.

What the fuck is he supposed to do?

(The feeling, no, instinctive _knowledge_ that somewhere out there, Ronan has freed the stone from its confinement, its miniature sun happily blazing away, just waiting to be used, doesn't help at all.)

This is so not Peter's area of expertise.

He's the man with the plan, sure. He's also great at winging it, really.  
But not with a team! And not on such a scale! And not with such a short time-frame to prepare!

His usual operations are small and quiet and sleight of hand not outright warfare and more people than he himself to consider.  
Get in, get out, blast any opposition and smile at anybody attractive he encounters on his way.

But now there are so many warm bodies waiting for his great idea of how they get out of this mess mostly intact and alive and that doesn't even take all the unsuspecting innocent people on Xandar into account.

So what the fuck is he supposed to do?

He's not a fighter, he's been constantly on the run for the last twenty-three years of his life, he's so _not_ cut out for this.

(The only part of this whole mess that actually doesn't worry him at all is how to get the orb away from Yondu _should_ Peter survive until the end.  
No big deal, he's done it before.  
But naturally _that_ is what everybody else is concentrating on.  
It goes downhill from there…)

But in the end, it can't be helped now, can it?

The universe has decided that this will be his lot in life and now he just has to deal with it along with everything else.  
(Silver-linings, right? At least he will be a big damn hero should he be able to pull this off.)

So he tries to squash his insecurities down and pulls his natural bullshitter to the forefront.  
If Peter's scared out of his mind, then the others probably aren't any better off.  
That's something you are supposed to do as a leader, right?  
To appear confident even when you want nothing else but to run for the hills and never stop?

Perhaps this will work just like the light once did on Ego: He wills this to work and it will happen.  
And nobody else will ever have to learn that he has no idea what he's actually doing.

(A part of him would love to ask Yondu for advice but that would… kind of defeat the purpose of this meeting in the first place.)

(And Yondu would never let him hear the end of it.)

(Also, he has the _slightest_ suspicion that even Yondu – great, all-knowing Captain Yondu – is kind of stumped on this one…)

(Just a little bit.)

Unfortunately his bluff gets called before he even has chance to follow up on it and the meeting descends into chaos.  
Four vastly different personalities that are just one step removed from hating each others' guts do not a good team make.

And Peter's stuck in the middle, apparently the one guy they have all silently and collectively decided they hate the least (Probably because they all think that he's the smallest threat. If only they knew…).

Peter tries anything from cajoling to reverse-psychology to pointing out their similarities that have been glaring into his face almost right from the beginning of their little unexpected journey and that hit so close to home that even now his voice threatens to shake when speaking about it.

But it doesn't work because no matter how high the stakes, in a way they are _all_ too used to running from their problems in one way or the other. And once you've started running, it's so _incredibly hard_ to stop.

But not impossible.

He's thirty-three when he finally stops running and stands his ground.

…

A bunch of jackasses standing in a circle, a horde of assholes out for the paycheck of their lifetime (Yeah right, saving Xandar has nothing to do with it, no sir, not with the Ravagers, no…) and whatever local help Peter can scare up by being known as a loveable rogue instead of a straight-out psychopath, that's all that stands between Xandar and certain destruction.

They're doomed.

(But at least they will look mighty stylish going down, if he may say so himself. Silver-linings…)

Peter adds every little trick he can think of to his arsenal and gets ready to improvise like hell on the fly (He's pretty certain that against an Infinity Stone he will need every help he can get, minor god or not.). Fortunately so many things – shields, spaceships, weapons – around him are energy-based or contain energy in one way or another and everybody else around him is too keyed up (and later on too busy) to notice how charges are higher and last longer, shots hit harder and faster and how everything generally works just so much better than it actually should.

It's exhilarating and terrifying and awe-inspiring in both senses of the word all at once and Peter's so _so_ glad that energy practically _jumps_ to do his bidding because otherwise he probably wouldn't even last five minutes into the battle before he keeled over in complete exhaustion and most likely died.

But even with every advantage he can give them it just doesn't seem to be enough.

Until the Nova Corps shows up and turns the tide of battle.

 _Peter's not sure when exactly his belief in any kind of law force and higher authority died, if it was already back on Earth, suffering from constant nasty whispers and the fists of bullies, or not until later, either under Yondu's yoke, after the whole disappointment that was Ego or simply after witnessing its fail or corruption on planet after planet after planet – but right here, right now, he can feel a tiny spark of belief reignite in his chest and it warms him all the way down to his core._

 _The sight of hundreds of ships, of so many different people working together, ready to sacrifice themselves for one common goal, for defending_ innocents _when nobody else will, takes his breath away._

 _And when he gets challenged to prove Mr. Not-impressed! – no,_ Denarian Saal _– wrong and to be, for just this once,_ better _than his reputation paints him, he can't help but want to rise to the occasion._

Peter pushes his ship as far as it will go, leaves the Nova Corps and all his doubts behind and accepts, once and for all, what might just be his final mission: Stop Ronan or die trying.

 _Even deep in the Dark Aster he can feel the Nova Corps' blockade springing to life, a shield so massive it sets his senses ablaze, even if it still pales in comparison to the sun waiting for him just a short distance away. The blockade's energy seems warm and almost sentient in a way, singing with what might be the famous Worldmind Peter has heard rumors of here and there._

 _It wants to_ protect, protect, protect Xandar _and Peter can't help but add his own desire, his own strength to its glorious song and throw his will behind it._

 _Protect, protect, protect Xandar –_ and all it entails!

…

Unfortunately he's soon too busy to spare the situation outside the Dark Aster any further thought.  
Between Gamora's crazy witch of a sister, Ronan's number one henchman and their multitude of minions he needs all his wits about him just to stay alive.

Rocket, Yondu and the Corps will just have to deal.

But hey, somebody _finally_ recognized him, the great Starlord, on sight. Looks like his days as a no-name outlaw are over once and for all.  
Add to that fact that his group is beginning to show the slightest signs of what he daringly may call teamwork and the day looks better and better.

(Groot will always be his favorite, though.  
Especially because he's turned out to be way too scary to tell him otherwise…)

It all goes surprisingly swimmingly until the big bad finally decides to strike back – but then again, that's always the problem with endbosses, isn't it? They are always at least ten levels above everybody else in their employ.

The first sign that they are in serious trouble is a surge of energy that feels to Peter like a punch in the gut.  
The shattering of the shield outside, sounding like nothing so much but an agonized shriek accompanied by the breaking of fragile – _incredibly fragile –_ glass to his senses, serves as a horrible follow-up strike and he can't help but repeat the mantra _protect, protect, protect_ over and over in whatever corner of his mind is still connected to its fragments.

He knocks the last goon out almost as an afterthought and comes to a halt before the door to Ronan's inner sanctum.

He can taste the Infinity Stone on the other side, beckoning to him and reveling in the destruction it has already caused, hungering for more.  
But no matter how much it calls to him, no matter how desperate Rocket sounds as more and more people die in the attack on Xandar, Peter and the others are well and truly stuck, cut off from their goal by tons of metal and a force-field of the likes Peter has never seen or felt before.

 _For a moment Peter's almost desperate enough to throw all caution to the wind and simply go for it: Unleash his light, twist the force-field to his bidding and rip it to shreds like Ronan did with the blockade. It's not as if he hadn't lit a flare all day for his father to follow anyway. But Peter's not sure if he wouldn't overload the whole ship-wide energy grid if he tried and even if he would succeed, there would be still all that metal to consider._

(And the fear. The questions and the _fear_ that would ultimately follow…)

But Peter's not alone anymore, he's part of a team now, and so the force-field goes down, the doors open and Gamora even manages to break through the newly unshielded ground and join them.

United at last (almost) they face Ronan –

The Hadron Enforcer doesn't even leave a dent.

(If Rocket could please put Peter's spare parts back where he found them then? _Obviously_ he isn't doing anything _useful_ with them after all…)

( – Peter didn't mean for him to bring the ship right over. Oi!)

Well, at least _that_ worked…

…

Peter comes to his senses to a memory full of light – _golden_ light this time around – and his heart _aches_.

(Terra, he thinks. Sweet golden Terra. Light and life and everything good in the world.  
And: I want to go home, I want to go home… if I could just figure out where that is…)

He can't quite remember the last time he felt this close to weeping.

Why does he always have to lose everything before he has even fully figured out that something's there to be lost in the first place?

But the universe is a harsh place and doesn't wait for anybody's heartbreak and Ronan has one serious one-track-mind.

(For a moment, Peter wonders if maybe Ronan is another one of Ego's children.  
His ability to withstand the Infinity Stone is worrying and his overall behavior down to his callous disregard for life is spot on a chip of the old block…)

(On second thought, that would make him Peter's brother and yeah, no, one megalomaniac per family is more than enough.)

(Also, ew!)

Fortunately, Rocket seems to have an idea, and given that the Milano is truly dead and gone by now, he's welcome to all the spare parts he can find as long as it works out in the end.

As for the necessary time… Well, did Peter mention that he's _great_ at improvising?

Peter also has no shame, can say honestly and truthfully that both his parents had no shame whatsoever (though for vastly different reasons) and that really, everybody should look into getting it surgically removed somehow.

Life is so much easier that way.

Gamora could certainly benefit from the ability to not-give-a-damn, but hey, that's alright, this is Peter's show and he's fine with it.  
He has made not feeling shame into a survival strategy ages ago and by now he has it down to an art-form. He's singing and dancing and being his familiar fool self, being one big distraction while the really important things happen right under his opponent's nose without him being the wiser.

 _This_ is what Peter's good at.

(For one moment he wonders if this is the secret of actual teamwork: Not everybody steadily working together towards a common goal, no, but… everybody doing their own thing and then combining it into something that ultimately works somehow.)

And in the end, Ronan stares, he snoozes and loses.

And Peter catches the Stone.

(This… might have been a mistake…)

…

 _Ikarus once tried to reach for the sun, Phaethon once tried to steer it's golden chariot, both failed, both fell in the end… there's nowhere for Peter to fall but into the sun itself._

Light in his fist, bright and purple, and he couldn't open his fingers again even if he wanted to.  
Grit and wind and stones against his skin – doesn't matter, nothing matters but the sheer force of energy suffusing his entire being.  
One touch and lightening races through his veins, igniting every single cell of his body and scorching his skin inside out. There are flames, bright purple flames swallowing his mind, his soul, leaking out of his eyes and blazing in the air with his screams.

 _The stars in his mind are gone, drowned out by a power so much greater than Ego could ever hope to be…_

Somehow Peter gets up, pulled to his feet like a puppet on its strings, and he can feel himself breaking, cracking at the seams, bursting apart on a molecular level. Cells, nerves, veins, everything is burning, alight with pain and purple light, not starshine-bright but older, ancient, other than everything else in this universe.

 _Lead me, the stone sings to everybody listening. Lead me, guide me, show me the way._  
 _It's a trap, a horrible trap, because the stone has no need for a hand to wield it, only for a conduit to connect it to more and more and more and more…_

Stone and earth beneath his feet and the microbes around his shoes are burning, lighting up with excess energy, a first taste of what's about to happen and – _No!_

 _Skin crumbling like ash, eyes burnt to cinder, caught in the endless second between the agony of burning alive and the final explosion of death and Peter_ refuses _to give in, to serve as the conduit of total devastation._

Gamora's ( _Mom's?)_ scream cuts like a knife through the pain, bringing one precious moment of clarity and _this_ , this _is a team,_ _sharing_ everything _, the good and the bad, bearing the load a single person can't, no matter how much it hurts, no matter the consequences, to survival, to victory and beyond._

Peter was created to be a conduit, a channel, and just this once, he doesn't mind this role at all.

…

(Tricking Yondu out of the orb? Seriously anti-climatic in comparison.)


	4. Chapter 4

No units, no ship, no Ravagers to return to – Peter finds that he's surprisingly okay with that.

At least Xandar is still full of life (Anal-retentive life, hell-bent on setting new rebuilding records, but life.), Starlord (and friends) are widely known as the heroes of the hour and the Nova Corps, as the representative of the whole planet, is sufficiently grateful.

Peter is pretty sure that he has never before been among so many people happy to see him.  
They greet him, they smile at him, they don't treat him like an idiot (Okay, _much_ of an idiot.) and they are generally pleasant to be around.

A part of Peter loves it.  
All that adoration, positive attention, hero worship…

Another part waits for the other shoe to drop.

Fortunately the Nova Corps keeps the team busy enough (They are probably scared of what the newly dubbed "Guardians of the Galaxy" – and how cool is _that_ name – will do if getting bored.) and Peter can distract himself with whatever they've just come up with to fill his days.

He goes and listens to debriefings, sits in on meetings (The Nova Corps clearly know leadership material when they see it – or have simply recognized him as the most sane and approachable of the whole bunch and Peter really, _really_ doesn't know how to feel about that.), gets somehow drafted to appear at charity events and meets a whole load of Very Important Persons while being the Most Important Person himself.

Most of the time Peter is _way_ out of his depth, but either he does his usual stellar job of hiding it or nobody really cares.

And at least he's not the only one uncomfortable with the whole situation:

Gamora has clammed up tighter than he has ever seen her before, back always ramrod straight and her bearing even more military than before.  
She's in even more meetings than Peter himself, spilling whatever information on Ronan, the Kree and Thanos she has.

Rocket is an aggressive little mess, constantly cuddling a potted Groot-sprout and snarling at everybody getting too close.  
He has bitten at least three different Corpsmen by now, reveling in the new-found freedom to do so without consequences, and his hotel room is a disaster of gutted appliances and half-finished experimental weapons.

Drax actually has the easiest time of it, simply by being himself.

Ronan is finished, the immediate threat averted, so everything is alright in Drax's little world.  
He has no further information to give, is not connected to anybody else of interest, and his whole mindset is so "alien" to anybody else's that the Nova Corps has given up on questioning him pretty fast. (He's not stupid, not really, just simply not worried about the same things as everybody else. Drax deals in facts, not in maybes and what-ifs: Ronan is dead. Xandar is safe. Drax will go after Thanos next. The Hows aren't important until he actually has to make a decision. And for everything else: Que sera, sera…)

He's good with kids, though, so the Corps has him mostly touring orphanages and hospitals. (Peter had to explain to Drax why he couldn't take his knives with him, though. It hadn't been fun…)

Things slow down after a while and the Nova Corps is smart enough to reward good behavior: Suddenly doors open for the team they had never thought possible before and even Rocket gets out of his funk for a bit when he gets introduced to some of the Corps ultra-secret, officially-do-not-even-exist Research and Development guys.

Gamora relaxes bit by bit, Drax is as content as he can be and Peter grins like a loon when a newly promoted Denarian Dey personally opens the high security doors to Xandar's most famous nature reserve for him and his team.

Given the wink Dey throws in his direction and the cheeky comments randomly distributed over the guided tour, the Denarian clearly remembers their first meeting(s) and has probably personally made sure to finally fulfill Peter's "biggest wish".

(Peter appreciates the thought, really, even if not for quite the reasons Rhomann Dey believes.  
It makes his whole life a lot easier in the long run.

Oh, he won't destroy the spore right here and right now, not when he has still such a great thing going on Xandar.  
But now that Peter got a close look at the various security measures, he's sure that his next attempt at breaking and entering will go off without a hitch. Maybe even without anybody figuring out that it was him.)

The visit and slight ridicule is definitely worth it though because the whole area _is_ breathtakingly beautiful and even the more destructive of his friends seem to appreciate the chance to quietly unwind in nearly untouched nature.

They clearly needed the breather and Rocket uses the opportunity to pester the scientist leading them around over all things regarding proper plant-care.

(Peter listens with half an ear while looking around.  
It kind of sounds as if Rocket expects them to and Peter fears that there will be a quiz at one point if the little guy gets his way.)

At long least they reach the (in)famous spore and while the rest of his teams ohs and ahs (more or less) appreciatively at Xandar's first contact with alien life, Peter glowers at it instead from a safe distance.

The stars in his mind mock him with their silver-bright glow.

 _The stars in his mind flicker purple now and then and Peter tries really, really hard not to think about what that might mean._

The seedling is a fragile, blue shimmering bauble in its lattice-work cradle, innocent and pretty and so obviously alien compared to its surroundings.

Peter can't help but wonder why nobody on Xandar ever thought to wonder about why there was only one of its kind around and just how it managed to resist any attempt to analyze it so far. But then again, Peter knows better than anybody else just how charming and convincing his father can be and it stands to reason that his offshoots (offspring?) wouldn't be any different.

Peter smiles and laughs and nods at all the right places as they continue their tour, but his mood has soured and his mind finally begins to return to more familiar thoughts and worries. He feels nervous all of sudden, restless and haunted, and the urge to run swells deep in his bones.

Peter's been here too long.

How long has it been now: Days? Weeks?  
Too long for a guy on the run from a minor god.

Peter has only one defense against his father and that is to simply not be wherever Ego is, to lose himself in the vastness of space and never stay longer than necessary in one single place.

What he has done just now?  
Whiling away the days on Xandar?  
Dangerous beyond measure!

Peter needs to leave, as soon as possible, no matter how.

(And what a _great idea_ it had been to pick _now_ to break with Yondu.  
No units, no ship, no Ravagers to return to – Peter is _fucked_ and will be lucky if he finds _one_ smuggler willing to take him on with a face as well-known as his now is.)

…

Fools are lucky, and Peter is the greatest fool of them all (Ask anybody, they'll point right at him.).

His half-assed negotiations and escape plans get derailed because Nova Prime has a _revelation_ for him.

Peter's an _alien_! (Go figure.)  
No really, he's something _ancient_ and _unknown_ they've _never_ seen before!

(Just look into your backyard, Peter wants to say. That little spore-thing valiantly resisting any attempt to give up its secrets? That's my dad.  
Now torch it! You're welcome by the way.)

As much as he wants to, Peter doesn't have it in him to rain on their parade.  
Not only because the explanation is really complicated and hard to believe, but also because they are all so excited and happy about the news.  
It's "fascinating" and, let's face it, Xandarian's are secretly all nerds at heart.

(The only one looking just as unimpressed as Peter feels is a still pretty battered looking Denarian Saal.

Then again, the poor man could also just be in pain, because apparently even members of the Nova Corps were only so long rule-abiding as it didn't mean that they were stuck in a hospital for longer than they felt necessary.

Peter whole-heartedly approves.)

(Saal's and a majority of the Nova Corps pilots' survival was a miracle as far as the rest of the Corps was concerned.  
An unexpected gift of the Worldmind that, upon the final shattering of the blockade, had turned the remains of the individual shields inwards instead, protecting the pilots first from the crushing force of the falling Dark Aster, then later from the impact as their broken starships rained down to the ground again.)

(Peter knows better though and can't help the warm glow of accomplishment pulsing deep in his chest.

 _Protect, protect, protect Xandar_ _– and_ all _it entails!)_

For once unable to act properly wow-ed by the news, Peter settles on suitably doubtful and a bit overwhelmed instead.  
(He's been Peter the plucky little Terran for so long, that some disbelief that he could be something more should be understandable, right?)

Gamora's spot-on observation doesn't help with his charade at all, but thankfully nobody notices how he freezes for just the slightest moment.

 _She doesn't know, she_ can't _know, she has_ no idea _, oh god, what is he going to do?_

In the end, it turns out that Nova Prime has one further reason to feel happy this day: Apparently Xandar outdid itself and rebuilt the Milano in record time.

(Peter would like to think that she's just happy to present them with a final thank-you for saving her world, but the truth is that Peter isn't the only one that has slowly begun to go stir-crazy. And while Peter's reaction was to search for a way off-planet, the other Guardians became more… creative.)

( Yeah no, let's face it: Any longer and somebody would have done _something_ everybody would have regretted.)

…

Now _this_ is a real reason to be at a loss for words.

Peter's ship is brand-spanking new and _beautiful_.  
Just like he remembers her and yet all shiny and untouched and with this new-car-smell that seems to be a universal constant.

Suddenly Peter feels like he can breathe again and Ego seems like a danger far, far away…

He's got his ship, he's got a team and it looks like his days of lonely planet-skipping are over once and for all.

He will flit from place to place.  
He will never stay anywhere longer than for a few days, hopping from planet to planet to space station to Xandar and back again.  
Sometimes he will follow orders, sometimes he will do missions and other times he will (secretly) follow the stars his father once kindled in his mind.

But this time Peter will have more than just faint acquaintances in every port and meaningless one-night-stands on every planet.  
Instead he will take his friends along and maybe, just maybe they will turn out to be the stable roots he can only sometimes admit to missing.

Maybe.

…

Peter sets his eyes on the stars, picks a course and pushes the throttle.

His mom's new/old music sounds through the ship, his new team is happy and hopeful around him and even the tiny Groot-sprout is finally strong enough to wake up and take a look at the limitless universe in front of him.

Everything is wonderful, as great as it could ever be, and Peter should be utterly content with it…

 _He's thinking about "Maybes", instead._

 _Because in that short moment, right before Gamora's scream, when Peter held the stone and was caught on the brink of either somehow controlling its might or painful death by internal combustion?_

 _What he'd sensed had been:_

 _Maybe._

 _…_

One year, that's what Peter gets.  
One endless seeming, adventure-filled, exciting and exhilarating year.

It's not perfect (but then, what ever is), but it's _great_ in a way nothing ever has been before.

In a way, Peter's doing exactly the same things he did before, even if on a somewhat greater scale and with his name actually _known_ now and in everybody's mouth.

He's a hero – _the_ hero of Xandar -, and consequently his jobs now contain a bit less breaking and entering and petty theft and a lot more freedom fighting, damsels in distress-rescuing and planet-defending.  
And a lot more guns and explosions.

But all in all, it's still the same.

(He's even still paying Yondu a hefty amount of credits after every job done because you just don't cheat your former Captain out of four billion units, especially if the last catastrophe clearly showed you just how badly you may need another army in your future one day.

Yondu is happy, Peter has options and the rest of the Ravagers are either mollified or dead.)

(That job cost extra, by the way…)

The only real difference is, that now, when he gets the sudden urge to fill the silence, somebody usually answers back.

Loudly.  
Insistently.  
And with opinions that regularly clash with his own.

It's heaven.

 _Peter Pan got his own bunch of Lost Boys now – but strangely enough, Peter can't remember Wendy being ever quite that good at killing…_

It's also hell, because even living with a bunch of Ravagers on the deceptively large looking Eclector never quite prepared Peter for being continuously stuck in an enclosed space with this particular mix of assholes:

Gamora judges absolutely everything and everybody, either quietly or with words that fucking _hurt_ and pry at every little insecurity Peter thought he'd hidden away ages ago.

Drax seems to just cruise along on his own wavelength, content in a way that should be enviable if it wouldn't usually be at the cost of everybody else panicking while everything around them seems to go to shit.

Rocket seems to actually take the change from lone wolf to team player the hardest, constantly poking and prodding at boundaries and limits, trying to find the point where the others will just give up, throw up their hands in the air and leave him behind.

It doesn't work and only makes him feel more caged and out of his depth, resulting in even more bristling, snarling and chaos (Peter's totally onto him. Mainly because if he wasn't so busy running damage control on Rocket's latest outbursts, he would cause them himself. In fact, he feels a bit as if he's living them vicariously through Rocket in a way.

Doesn't spare him the headaches, though.).

And Groot…

Grott is cute, too innocent for this world (let alone the universe) and trouble with a capital T.

(He's still Peter's favorite, though. With the cute face and the big, guileless eyes? And the itsy, bitsy fingers and branches?  
Honestly, how could he not be?)

Anyway, somehow they've all made it through almost an entire year by now, surviving ups and downs and each other.

(And wasn't that a close call with the Sovereigns thanks to Rocket getting the bright idea to steal some of the very same batteries they had been contracted to protect in the first place? Fortunately Peter was even better than him in stealing them _back_ and dropping them somewhere where they'll be found sooner rather than later. Sometimes it helps that every like calls to like in a way and that Peter's senses have only been getting sharper since his encounter with the Infinity Stone.)

(Now, what to do with Nebula, though.  
Because no matter what Gamora says, she's so not ready to break with her sister once and for all.  
Peter's somewhat of an expert of not being ready to break with people by now and he can tell, if he lets her deliver Nebula to Xandar, Gamora will probably regret it forever.)

(Hopefully Nebula has experience with lock-picks and will just consider it a favor owed…)

(And if Peter slipped her Yondu's contact frequency on the sly?  
Well, after that little ill-fated mutiny the Guardians helped the Ravagers deal with, they are certainly short on men and may just take her in…  
And consider it another bunch of credits off Peter's debt.)

(Maybe then Yondu will also finally stop trying to reach him every few days.)

(Peter is a genius, if he may say so himself.)

…

 _Peter is a fool._  
 _A complete and utter fool._

One year, that's what Peter got.  
One endless seeming, adventure-filled, exciting and exhilarating year.

 _How could he ever think this would work?_ _  
_ _How didn't he_ notice _?_

He flitted from place to place.  
He never stayed anywhere longer than for a few days, hopping from planet to planet to space station to Xandar and back again.  
Sometimes he gave orders (that once in a while were even obeyed), sometimes he did missions (or wormed his way out of whatever trouble the others had roped him into) and other times he followed the stars his father once kindled in his mind without any of his new team the wiser.

 _Peter is a fool and an idiot but he isn't stupid._ _  
_ _He should have seen the_ obvious _problem right away…_

He had faint acquaintances in every port, meaningless one-night-stands on every planet, stable roots forming oh so slowly right there on his ship…

 _But then again, he had had no reason to worry, didn't he?_ _  
_ _After all he spent_ years _this way, never having any problems out-running Ego..._

It wasn't perfect (but then, what ever is), but it was _great_ in a way nothing ever has been before.

It's also about to end.

 _Because his homebase was the Eclector then._ _  
_ _And the Eclector was_ mobile _…_

Because here he stands now, eye to eye with his father – his smiling, welcoming, utterly charming father – standing right next to an excited looking Nova Prime.

 _And_ Xandar _is decidedly_ not _._

Peter feels his heart freeze in his chest.

…

(Now Peter knows why Yondu was so desperately trying to reach him:  
To warn him of the danger waiting where Peter thought he was safe…

Peter really, _really_ should have listened.

But then again, he got complacent.  
He forgot that the most important rule of running is to _not get caught_ – to _not_ get into a _position_ where you can get _caught_!

And he forgot that he should always – _always!_ – listen to Yondu.

Keep your head down and listen to Yondu.  
You live longer that way…)

…

Peter feels his heart freeze in his chest and a smile slip on his lips, his natural bullshitter coming to the forefront to play while everything else just seems to go… numb somehow.

Introductions are made and Ego plays the happy father, finally finding the son he had been searching for for so long.  
(Can't tell the truth, can he? Not without inciting questions just why Peter ran in the first place and fighting the Nova Corps would be such a _hassle_ …)

Nova Prime and the rest of the Guardians are lapping it right up, happy and excited and just seeing another lucky break in a series of them.  
They are so, _so_ glad for him and it breaks his heart even further if it's even possible.

For them the universe is a vast and wonderful place and good things happen to good people and Peter has _absolutely no fucking idea_ just when this happened. Just _when_ his mismatched bunch of murderers and professional assholes forgot that there's no such thing as lucky breaks and happy endings, only the short calm before the next shitstorm, the few harried moments of rest before disaster strikes once again.

(Peter isn't sure when exactly he forgot this himself. He should have _seen_ it…)

His father looks reassuringly normal in midst all the alien strangeness of Xandar, with once dark brown, by now fittingly greying hair and his friendly, charming smile. He is tall and strong and he wraps his arms around Peter as if he could encompass him completely even in this diminished form, keep Peter warm and safe from the cruel universe and let nothing never ever hurt him again.

Peter feels tears prickling in his eyes and heart-wrenching regret break through the numbness inside of him.

(If only, if only…)

His father seems so glad to see him, too: his eyes are warm, his voice is warm and everything about him is welcoming. His deep laugh still rumbles through Peter right into his very bones.

It's almost as if Peter never left at all…

(God, he _missed_ him so.

His dad, the planet, the minor god, the _monster…_ _  
_His dad, his real-life _dad_! )

Peter has no idea how long he clings to him, how long he clings to yesterdays and childhood dreams and the last, crumbling dregs of innocence long lost…

He could stay here, right here, for an eternity and it still would never be enough.

(He missed him so, will always miss him…)

But there are little, brittle bones in his memories, thousands upon thousands of fragile little skulls shoved into long forgotten piles where no living thing will ever find them, unmourned and unmissed but for the potential of what they could have been.

And there is a universe consisting of a billion of stars in the back of his mind, flickering starshine-bright and purple at times, just waiting for Ego to remake everything touched by their light.

 _He can already hear the screams…_

And there is his team, happy and loud and so blind to the danger in their midst, and the people of Xandar who haven't done anything to deserve this and then, last but not least, there is a woman, a girl, a _girl-child_ with large, frightened eyes and the painful parody of a smile on her face, standing at Ego's back, at his beck and call, just waiting for an order, _any_ order that will be given.

(And Peter knows his father, can see past his kind eyes and warm smile and read the amused, parental indulgence beneath it all:  
Didn't you want a pet?)

I'm sorry, _he will tell her later. I'm so,_ so _sorry._ _  
_ _I thought he would get a_ dog!

 _Because Peter was wrong: Gamora isn't Wendy, but the true Tinkerbell, a warrior in her own right, leading her boys into flight where otherwise they would have been confined to the ground, far from any happy thoughts._

 _And this,_ this _is Wendy, this poor little girl, all alone in Never-Neverland, where she never should have been to start with, just as lost and broken as all of them now, and it's solely Peter's fault…_

He clings to his father, basks in his warmth and the safety of his embrace and hides the treacherous tears in his shoulder.  
He remembers red plains and bluish mountains, silver metal and rainbow bubbles floating through the air.  
Warm smiles, deep rumbling laughter and marvel upon marvel created just for him.

He was only _ten_ when he gave all of this up to run and in twenty-four years – twenty-four long, _long_ years – there hasn't been one day since that he hadn't _missed_ this…

And he's thirty-four when he finally has to decide just how it will end.

 _…_

He wanted to see the universe, Peter later tells his father, when they are all alone to finally "get to know each other". (Ha!)

Not at first, naturally.

At first, he was just lonely. He wanted somebody to play with.  
He wanted pets.

And Ego was simply taking too long.

But then Peter got curious, he wanted to see all those things Ego had told him about for himself, so he… wandered a bit.  
And then a bit more.  
And a bit more…

And from one moment to the next years had passed and Peter was far from home, from Ego, and sort of just cruising along, taking in the sights, meeting new people and having fun.

Can Ego really blame him?  
Didn't he do the same when he was young and stupid?

Ego is a Celestial.  
He has neither the ability nor the desire to understand that anybody, especially his own offspring, could have any differing thoughts or opinions than him, let alone that Peter would try to deceive him.

Peter is a Celestial.  
He grew up (or at least grew older) in the school of hard knocks out in a cold, hostile universe and learned how to lead people along and tell them just what they wanted to hear first by himself and later perfected these skills under the tutelage of a master.

Peter is – in the eyes of a lot of people but especially in the eyes of a millennia-old being – also still a child.  
He knows how to whine and to get himself out of trouble.

Ego is a parent that never actually had to do any parenting.  
He still doesn't stand a chance.

So Ego believes him and laughs and Peter's heart breaks with the sound even while his mouth is smiling wide and running a mile a minute, telling Ego of everything he learnt and experienced and how it paled in comparison to Ego and his home-made wonders.

And all the while, Peter plans.

10


	5. Chapter 5

Peter plans.

He can't bring his friends into this, that he decides right away.  
Maybe he's still too used to doing it all on his own, but even after a year spent in their company, all his thoughts are about how he, Peter, can pull this off – not them together. Besides, how do you even explain that your father is a monstrous, civilization-devouring, minor god without getting declared crazy (or worse, tipping your father off that you're maybe not quite as happy with his plans as you let on.)

Show them the light and hope for the best?  
Call Yondu to serve as a character witness?

Yeah no, they will never believe him and Xandar will be toast.

(Sure, maybe Gamora would believe him…  
But people have at least heard of Thanos, his crazy is well known. Ego's isn't – and Ego is charming and Peter has played the fool far too well for far too long and is known to tell a few tall tales now and then.  
He will never be taken seriously when it comes down to his word against Ego's.)

Also, moon-destroying Hadron Enforcer-jokes aside (and that damn thing didn't even _scratch_ Ronan, Peter's still miffed with Rocket about that), what would they even do against a fucking _planet_?

Set down their feet extra hard?  
Kick some grass?  
Piss in the fountains?

Let's face it, everything even vaguely human-sized is nothing but a liability on Ego, nothing but potential hostages, smushed-frogs-to-be.

Heck, _Peter_ himself is at a distinct disadvantage and he's at least a Celestial himself.  
He has no idea how he should pull this off!

 _No, that's a lie._

 _He has an idea. A terrible idea._

 _A horrible idea that scares him almost as badly as Ego himself._

 _Almost._

So no, his team is out.

But maybe, just maybe, if Yondu really is as worried about Ego as he seems (he's still calling Peter every few hours, given that Peter had no time to message him back yet), Peter won't have to do this completely on his own anyway.

(Silver-linings have never seemed as important as now…)

…

In the end, it's easier to leave to set his plan in motion than he first dreaded it would be.

Apparently Peter's father has finally found a solution to his insomnia: his very own little Wendy telling him bedtime stories and singing him lullabies, soothing him to sleep with nothing but a touch (but no smile, because what had that poor little girl to smile about anyway?).

Peter meets her in the hallway in front of his father's room, plastic expression in place, eyes big and dark and full of fear, because she's the only being on this whole planet that has even the faintest idea what Ego and by implication Peter are actually capable of. (And Peter hates seeing this fear being directed at him. He always wanted to be _respected_ , yes, but never ever _feared_.)

She looks up to him with those dark, dark eyes and his breath catches in his throat, because _this_ is _his_ fault and he can never make it right again. He can just try to make it better. (He wonders, just for a moment, if this is how Yondu felt when he had pressed a communicator in an eight-years-old's dirty, little hands.)

He carefully takes her hand (and ignores the aborted little flinch that threatens to break his heart all over again), because as much as he hates frightening her, he _needs_ her to know that he's sincere.

I'm sorry, he tells her _._ I'm so, _so_ sorry.  
I thought he would get a _dog_!

 _Peter's not sure what exactly she's sensing from him, can't bring himself to stick around for long enough to witness it lest he loses his resolve to pull through with his plan at all – but when he chances a last glimpse back, right before rounding the corner, he can just see all the different tears starting to run down her face that he can't allow himself to let fall…_

…

Even if he hates the reason for it, a part of Peter feels almost glad to be on his own again.  
Looking after others, looking _out_ for others is hard and Peter's very used to only being responsible for himself.

Also, since somehow acquiring a bunch of hanger-ons, most of his jobs have gained the unfortunate tendency to devolve into shouting, shooting and explosions at some point (and not always in this particular order).

As a squishy almost-Terran, this is not really Peter's area of expertise (even if he has adapted remarkably well, if he may say so himself).

But this?

This will be more like his operations of old, small and quiet (at least for the first part) and full of sleight of hand and misdirection.  
He will get in, get out and hopefully nobody will know what he really was after until it's already too late.

 _He hesitates for just one moment, torn between carrying on and seeing his friends one last time before everything will go to hell – but he decides against in the end, scared that he will lose his nerve if he lets himself get distracted from his goal._

 _Even now he can feel his insides quaking._

His first destination is Xandar's famous nature reserve, because after having saved the planet already once he's kind of invested in its future survival, even in the event that he should fail with his actual mission. (And maybe, if he fails and they don't get converted into Ego 2.0 right away out of the blue they will even have a fighting chance.)

Now that he knows what to expect and what to look for, getting through the security is easy as pie (Thank you, Denarian Dey.) and in no time at all he stands in front of Ego's spore, glowing innocently in the darkness of the night. Peter's an expert in uprooting these things efficiently and quickly by now, but just for a moment he's tempted to just burn it and the whole reserve to the ground, just to make sure that he really gets _all_ of it.

He's tempted, oh so tempted, but he doesn't in the end, because even if he doesn't really understand the value of all these plants and animals beyond "Oh, pretty!", he would never take them from the Xandarians for nothing but a bit of petty revenge.

(But he does understand, doesn't he?  
After all, he would do almost everything to see an actual daisy again, wouldn't he? A real Terran tree? A dog? A bird?  
Hell, he would be willing to kill for the memory of the taste of apples alone sometimes…

And isn't this whole mission in the end about preserving what is and what once was so that there will be a future worth living for in the end?)

Peter just absorbs the spore like so many before, secure in the knowledge that there are so many of these things out there that Ego won't even notice one missing, not even one that got extinguished right next to him (Seriously, Peter must have gotten rid of at least a hundred by now and his father hadn't even mentioned it.), fiddles with the security systems a bit and then makes his way back into the city.

Time for step two of his plan.

 _He hands are shaking so hard, he almost sets off an alarm anyway._

…

The exact location of the Infinity Stone is probably one of the Nova Corps best kept secrets.

Officially, all that Peter knows is that it is in some kind of vault somewhere, constantly guarded by tech and Corpsmen alike.

Unofficially, years of operating on the "wrong" (Peter prefers calling it "more flexible" or "more exiting") side of the law have given him enough experience to know that Nova Prime would have wanted to keep it close, where she herself could have a constant eye on it rather than bury it on some distant outpost, and where reinforcements were always just one frantic SOS away.

(At least if said reinforcements weren't currently busy racing to a certain nature reserve whose alarms just reported a massive break-in, followed by a – purely fictional, Peter's no monster – spot of arson. The false alarm alone would probably have kept them occupied for long enough, but once they discover the missing spore they will probably go out of their nerdy little minds and not worry about anything else for a while.)

Anyway, neither the official nor unofficial state of Peter's knowledge are really important, because _really_ unofficially (need-to-know as in only-Peter-needs-to-but-doesn't-actually-wants-to-know) you could probably drop him at some random point of the universe and he would be able to point you not only in the right direction to the Stone but also give you a rough estimate of just how far it is away.

 _His breath shortens whenever he thinks too long about it and now is no exception._

So in no time at all he wanders through the halls of the building containing the Infinity Stone, nodding cheerfully to the Corpsmen he meets in the public levels and sneaking past those he meets in the secure and secret areas. Some of his toys that haven't seen much use since his Ravager-days ease him along the way and keep him off the security screens. (And Peter would be willing to bet a lot of units that by now, thanks to all those explosions and world-savings happening in the last year, most people have forgotten that he started out as a thief and a successful one at that – even if that fact had damned him to a life of anonymity.)

Standing in front of the vault doors brings back surprisingly nostalgic feelings, reminding him of another vault door he faced in what seems like a lifetime ago now. Sure, the twitching guards lying on the floor left and right from him are new and Morag wasn't nowhere near as well lit, but the general feeling is the same. Dark and foreboding and warning any would-be-thief away by the atmosphere alone.

And the price?  
The price on the other side of these thick, secure doors is still the same.

 _There's a thorny little lump in the middle of his chest, cold and heavy and sending a shiver down his back with every breath he takes._

 _The blazing miniature sun beyond the doors in front of him seems to laugh delightedly and beckons to him with the bright purple promise of heat and_ power!

Peter takes a deep breath, rubs his sweaty hands dry on his pants, then places them carefully on the vault door.  
The Nova Corps has too good tech down here to open the door the Ravager-way, but that's okay, that's fine, Peter's been training and experimenting since he ended up locked out on the Dark Aster with no idea what to do and this… should be… doable… maybe… if he just…

 _The force-field is the first to go, shuddering and twisting and unraveling like one of Mom's old lumpy pullovers after she caught it on some chicken wire. He's careful with it, catching the excess energy and channeling it right back into the locking mechanism instead of into the energy grid of the building. The alarm impulses get caught in a loop to chase themselves, trying to tell each other over and over again that "_ something's wrong, no nothing's wrong, nothing to see here, what's going on" _while the door-lock fizzles and sparks and falls open with heavy, final sound._

Peter comes back for air, smirks at the stunned not-expressions on the four helmets turning in his direction and slides a gravity mine into the middle of the room. Some graceless flailing, frightened shouts and four shots later and he steps over the unconscious Corpsmen to the safe in the middle of the room.

(One day – should he survive this _and_ walk away as a free man afterwards, which he kind of doubts – he should sit down with Nova Prime and some of her immediate minions and go with them over every single security feature they have and why and how exactly they suck.  
He will demand a pretty penny for it and probably have way more fun than should be allowed and they will certainly not want to see his face for at least a few years afterwards, but hey, the truth hurts more often than not and _this_ , this was far too easy for an Infinity Stone and is – plainly spoken – just sad all around.)

Like usual, life just loves to throw him curve-balls, because (naturally) this is the moment he hears his name shouted behind him.  
And well, would you look at that, it's Denarian Saal.

Peter's honestly not sure what to make of his expression, some weird mixture of shock, affront, disbelief, vindication, regret and several kinds of anger. Doesn't really matter though, because, like the good little soldier he is, he's already one hand at his communicator.

And Peter can't have that.

He reacts without thinking, shooting the Denarian with the gun in his hand while at the same time unleashing his light on every single energy source in the room.

Circuits overload, burst and sizzle, force-fields explode in countless vanishing pieces and the communicator sparks violently and dies. (So do Peter's guns. Damn.) The room goes abruptly dark and there should be alarms going off any second now, calling in reinforcements (And Peter's just fried his weapons, _great_ …) but –

 _– but as Peter desperately tries to reel his light in before it shuts down the whole building, his consciousness brushes against something else, something warm and vaguely familiar that he felt once before: The Worldmind or at least what he thinks is the Worldmind._

 _It takes notice of the intruder, takes notice of the alarms shrieking for its attention – and shuts them down, turning its attention deliberately away and_ trusting _Peter with the most dangerous thing in the known universe._

 _Protect, protect, protect Xandar, it sings, softly, as if reminding him of a pact made ages ago._

 _And it's good, it's great, Peter's already going to fight one planet today, he wasn't aiming on making it two… but he can't decide if the lump in his throat at the show of implicit trust is warm, fuzzy gratitude or bitter, choking guilt…_

The room is pitch-black now and Peter thanks all his lucky stars (Ha ha…) that his mask uses no energy at all until actually activated and therefore escaped the great Blackout of Peter Quill. (And that he only aimed his little impromptu EMP outwards because brains and exploding translator chips probably don't mix… Also, _ew!_ )

Anyway, putting it on shows him Denarian Saal groaning on the floor, only half-conscious from a charge that got partly snuffed out while it was still working its magic (or Peter only clipped him – nah, it clearly was the light) and one really heavily armored safe that nobody will ever get opened again without using heavy machinery.

Or getting creative.

Peter grimaces, prays to all major gods that this will work and channels the starshine-brightness tingling in his fingertips into heat.

…

A short time later Peter steps out of the Nova Corps building, the orb containing the Stone safely tucked away in his jacket (far too close to his heart for comfort and he swears that he can _feel_ its energy playfully licking over his skin even through the heavy shielding), and nobody the wiser.

The night is mild and peaceful, Xandar's inhabitants are ambling along and minding their own business like usual and nobody even suspects that somebody just robbed one of the most fortified places of the Nova Empire and relieved them of their most dangerous artifact.

(If Peter weren't so terrified and sad and guilty and… _things_ , he would be almost proud.)

Time for step three.

There's no going back now.

 _Insides numb, he convinces himself that what he feels is conviction._ _  
_  
 _Resolve._ _  
_  
 _Determination._

 _It's terror instead._ _  
_  
 _Pure, all-consuming terror, but what choice does he have?_

…

His last stop on Xandar is the port and here is where Peter's plan gets a bit… _shaky_ because this is the one phase of this whole endeavor that he can't pull off completely on his own.

Ego won't sleep forever (in fact it's a minor miracle he slept as long as he did and he owes Mantis even more for giving him the time he needs) and once he wakes, he will be angry.

Maybe just annoyed, if he still thinks that Peter simply decided to sightsee a bit more on a whim, but once he finally figures out just what his errant son is up to, he will be mad enough to destroy all of Xandar in his rage.

Peter hopes – he really, _really_ desperately hopes – that Ego's own inability to see anything not-Celestial as anything but insignificant will for once work in Peter's favor and that his father will be too focused to get his consciousness back to his body to bother with the people around him.

Because Peter has wondered for years just why exactly his father needed an actual space-ship to get from place to place and while he's not one-hundred percent sure, he's pretty certain that he's figured it out: He has no other choice.  
Once Ego's consciousness has been actually transferred into an avatar, he's stuck there if he leaves his true brain behind.

Still, it can't be as easy as simply destroying the avatar and killing Ego at the same time or Peter's current problem would have solved itself neatly a long time ago (Because let's face it: Ego has been around for millennia and even a minor god must have messed up somewhere in that span of time. The universe is just as creative in creating new kinds of life as it is in killing it off and nobody can expect and prepare for _everything_ that's out there.).

So, either Ego recreates his avatar anew every time it gets destroyed, like he would on his own planet (Peter doubts it. Did he mention that matter manipulation is _hard_ , especially once away from Ego's core and his light?), or, without a hull to animate, the consciousness simply dissipates and gets returned to sender.

(And here's a thought, an important thought, a question half-reminding him of long-forgotten fairytales that Peter's going to test pretty soon: What's faster, light or thought?  
Peter's betting on light or his father wouldn't use that big-ass space-egg to visit and infect the known and unknown universe.)

Anyway, his last stop on Xandar is the port and here is where Peter's plan gets a bit… _shaky_ because while he needs to get to Ego-the-planet as soon as possible he also needs to keep Ego-the-man from destroying things and catching up from him.  
And, just like Ego, Peter simply can't pull this off completely on his own.

But he isn't alone, isn't he?

More and more familiar faces show up among the night crowds (Space for Dummies 101, by Yondu Udonta for little ignorant Terran boys who ask far too many questions: Rule 439 – A species can be considered properly civilized and therefore looting-worthy when there are just as many people out at night as there would be in daytime. Unless the species was nocturnal to begin with, then it became a guessing game helped along by several sub-rules.), watching Peter just as he watches them, some nodding, some not, all with a grim look in their eyes that tells him that Yondu actually spilled the beans for once and that the Ravagers know exactly what will happen should they mess up.

(But they _totally_ just saved Xandar for the pay-out Peter promised them, yes sir…)

Peter doesn't see Yondu until he enters the port proper and even then it is only from afar: As far as Peter can tell he's doing something nasty and probably explosive to Ego's ship and has the biggest canon Peter's ever seen resting almost casually by his side (A part of him wonders if Rocket has sold weapon specs again. After the last incident they had a long and painful discussion about it, and Peter had thought they had agreed that Rocket would never do it again, and yet…).

A part of Peter wants to stall, go over and (cling to him) say good-bye.

But the greater part, the part that stopped him from lingering by Mantis, from searching for his friends and from torching the reservation, the part that apparently decided that _now_ was the best time to _finally_ get all the pieces of Peter together and give this growing up-business a try, urges him onward.

'Later', it tells him, and Peter wants to laugh, to weep, because he knows 'later' and it is a limp hand and endless regrets and lost chances that haunt you for all of eternity.

Still, 'later' it is and so he continues on, passing by the Milano after just a second of hesitation (His very first Tinkerbell, his way to the stars, once, a life-time ago. But that was then and this is now and now there are more people calling her their home and he won't take that from them, even if he might just plan to destroy their world a little bit.) and further into the port where Kraglin waits next to a sleek, little ship built purely for speed Peter's never seen before - and Nebula, in Ravager-red.

(Peter's _good_ , didn't he tell you? Really, really good.)

Nebula nods, face unreadable, while Kraglin opens his mouth, fumbles for a bit, and then closes it again, choosing to awkwardly pat Peter on the shoulder instead.

And Peter gets it: What do you say in a situation like this?

(Also, they are both _Ravagers_ , they don't do this emotion-shit.)

So he just nods back, enters the ship and proceeds to leave Xandar, the Ravagers and his team (his family) behind, maybe forever this time.

…

 _The journey to Ego is quiet in a way Peter has gotten unused to._

 _Just a year with a team and suddenly the silence has become foreign, leaving room for far too many heavy thoughts and worries._

 _The Stone croons excitedly in his mind, painting the stars purple and straining against its cage._  
 _'Soon', it knows and so does Peter._

 _The ultimate test and Peter is making sure that however it ends, he will win._  
 _And yet, at the same time, it can only end up with him losing as well._ _  
_  
 _How much he will lose still stands to be determined._

 _He swallows and tries to listen to music, to his mother's last gift to him and he wonders if she knew._

 _He prays not, he_ thinks _not, and yet…_

 _For just a moment, Peter doubts._

 _He swallows and tries to listen to music, to his mother's last gift to him and he wonders if one of the songs on the cassette was for Ego and if his mom would approve of what Peter's about to do._

 _He hopes so, he_ thinks _so, and yet…_

 _Peter just so desperately wants to believe._

 _He listens to music and steels himself and part of him regrets that he never told Yondu, the man who sold him to a monster, the man who's right now doing his best to give Peter a headstart, that he's just as much of his dad as Ego is._

 _Because while Ego was always ready to give Peter everything he could have asked for, Yondu always gave him what Peter actually_ needed _…_

 _…_

Reality is splintering.

Everything seems to exist in snapshots:

Ego's grumpy face as Peter nears the planet.

The hollow feeling in Peter's chest when he lands and _feels_ that Ego hasn't returned yet, that everything around him may look alive and inviting but is frozen in time, unanimated in Ego's absence and nothing more but a of a parody of life, a memorial of potential perverted.

The ground opening like a wound under Peter's hands (So easy, too easy after years alone in space. He wants, he wills and it happens.), deep into Ego's very core to a brightly lit cavern and Ego's heavily protected brain.

The sensation of flying under his own power, deep and deeper, where Peter's never been before.

Countless wonders whispering to his mind from the surface, from the deep, trying to tempt him away from his goal as some part of his father must be becoming aware that something is going on, that something is about to happen and that he's absolutely defenseless for once.

Silvery white starshine all but spilling from his hands and reflecting in the cracks and patterns of the shell around Ego's brain like a night sky.

Metal, red-hot, white-hot, twisting and melting and light getting so bright it should hurt in his eyes and yet only feels like home.

A blue shine, a familiar and yet alien shape, pulsing and slightly gelantinous and he remembers being eight and wanting to poke it just to see if it would wobble.

Peter has to close his eyes for just a moment and can't decide if he'd rather laugh or cry – or do both.

 _The Infinity Stone pulsates in its orb, chanting 'Now! Now! Now!'_

A deep breath, eyes opening wide – then Peter opens the orb _and the world drowns in purple fire._

 _There's light in his veins, light in his eyes, his ears and nose and mouth and it's tainted._

 _It should be bright and silver but burns purple now, eating through his chest from the inside out, glowing in his ribs, his lungs, his heart like miniature novae caught in flesh and hating every second of it, tearing their way free with fire and heat and light, so much light…_

 _There's ash on his tongue – no, his tongue is turning to ash – and Peter wants to cough but he's breathing sparks and eternity and devastation and there's no room for such fleeting things like oxygen where infinity rules._

 _Peter is afraid, so deeply, deeply afraid, terrified to whatever remains of his bones, and yet there's a serenity to his panic because even if he dies, it won't matter: Ego is alive, is everywhere around him, and so, even if Peter dies and the Stone falls, Ego will die all the same._

 _A part of him, the part all too aware of the tears of liquid fire running down his cracking cheeks, wants to end it like this._

 _Give in, give up, die and not face the pain that is losing your only parent._

 _He's done it once and it broke him._ _  
_  
 _He just can't do it again._

 _And yet…_

 _His skin is turning to dust, his bones visible as glowing embers cradled by fraying nerves and muscles lit brightly from within, purple, purple, purple wherever he looks – and yet…_

 _Caught in the endless second between the agony of burning alive and the final explosion of death Peter refuses to give, he takes_ control and serves as the conduit of total devastation.

'Goodbye', he thinks, as purple energy disintegrates his father's brain before his very eyes and then races onward, lighting up everything connected to it only to leave nothing in its wake, not even ash.

The devastation is silent but all-encompassing and Peter can feel it rushing outward, from the channels and roots in the deeper areas of the caverns up to the thickly planted surface and the colorful spires of Ego's palace.

'Goodbye', he thinks, as he senses the bones of his siblings finally crumble once and for all.

…

Peter doesn't know how he finds his way back on the surface of this now dead world, but suddenly he's there, standing out in the open and feeling the atmosphere slowly evaporate for a lack of will and weakening gravity keeping it around.

Far above him the sky darkens, the stars get brighter and brighter and Nova Corps ships (no Milano, a part of him distantly wonders if Yondu did something to it, to spare him that experience) descend in tight formation, all centered on him.

Peter knows what it looks like – knew it what it would look like right from the beginning – and he has accepted it.

He knows that they either saw everything as it happened or now have to assume the worst from the evidence right in front of their eyes: A once lush planet teeming with life burning up in a purple flash of light until nothing was left but a lifeless husk floating aimless through space.

And him at the center of it, the glowing Infinity Stone still in his hand.

A slightly larger ship lands in front of him and even with their helmets on and their visors down Peter can see that the disembarking Corpsmen training their guns on him are horrified. Nova Prime and his friends following along just after her certainly are. (Funny, he'd never thought that he would ever see them all quiet, let alone speechless, at the same time, and yet, here they are…)

He doesn't say anything (How should he explain this anyway, where's the _proof_?), just extends his hand (Everybody flinches and that _hurts_ just as much as he ever thought it would.) and offers up the Stone.

Nobody moves then one of the Corpsmen (Saal, some part of him notices, naturally it's Not-Impressed!-Denarian-Saal, the face under the visor tight and unreadable.) determinedly steps forward and encases the Stone in another containment orb with one swift movement.

 _A purple tint he hadn't even noticed vanishes from Peter's vision…_

Seconds later they are on him and his arms get harshly wrenched on his back and cuffed up tight – painfully so, probably, but Peter is so numb he doesn't even notice – and he's not so gently dragged up and into the waiting ship.

If his friends look at him, he doesn't notice.  
If his friends say anything, he doesn't notice.

Peter's tired – so, so tired – and grieving.

 _Peter killed him._

Mantis is inside the ship, sitting like a frozen statue on one of the banks, tears streaming silently down her cheeks (Her own or Peter's still? Tears of sadness, fear or joy?). She looks just as broken as Peter feels and he just can't deal with this right now, so he doesn't protest at all when he gets pulled to the other end of the room.

 _Peter killed him._

There are questions he barely registers and demands soon given up upon once it becomes clear Peter won't answer, but the stares, the silent, accusing, _fearful_ stares remain.

A part of him knows that he should at least try to explain (How do you explain something like that?), but –

 _Peter killed him._

 _Peter killed him and maybe he doesn't even_ want _to try to explain._

 _After all, it's still patricide in the end, still his father, the father he loved, who he killed without mercy, without leaving him a fighting chance, without hope of saving himself._

 _Maybe Peter's secretly longing for some kind of punishment, for a chance to do penance, because he was the favored son, the favorite son, full of light and more powerful, more_ beloved _than any other, rebelling against his father and_ deserving _to suffer for it._

 _To rot in hell for it._

He knows he should at least try to explain (How do you explain something like that?), but –

 _And Peter wonders, what if he killed_ her _, too?_

 _His mom, his wonderful, vibrant mom, dying of a tumor growing in her brain, and tumors don't just appear out of nowhere, it must have been growing for years, so what if Peter was the cause of it somehow? Who even knows what having an alien baby, a_ Celestial _baby, does to a human in the end?_

 _Patricide and matricide and Peter's really an orphan now, isn't he, and it's all his own damn fault..._

He should really try to explain (How do you explain something like that?), but –

 _Reality is splintering and everything seems so hazy and so far, far away._

It just hurts, it hurts so fucking much and Peter wants nothing more than to choke on the tears that just won't come and he wants to scream and shout and roar his pain at an uncaring universe, asking it why him, why now, why it's always him having to lose everything just when he found it.

And he wants to curl up into a little ball, crying and rocking himself to sleep and wake up from this nightmare, and he wants to find Yondu and either break him for bringing him to Ego in the first place or break down in his arms.

And he wants to unleash his light and fry the people around him inside out, give them all a reason to be afraid of him, because how dare they, _how dare they_ , he did it for them and he wants to rip this sad little excuse of a ship apart, face the void and make it please, please, finally end somehow…

 _Reality is splintering because reality is just too hard to bear right now and so Peter closes his eyes, shuts everybody else out and drowns himself in the universe consisting of a billion stars living in the back of his mind…_

12


	6. Chapter 6

Their arrival back on Xandar is quiet, the common people probably not even knowing that anything happened (After all, how do you explain the fall of a hero?), and Peter is thankful for that.

They overfly the port area (Ego's ship is nothing more than a smoking crater, with a slightly smaller one right next to it, so yeah, maybe the people of Xandar _did_ know that something happened but not exactly what…) and head right for Nova Central Command.

There are more Corpsmen waiting for them, for _him_ , and once upon a time Peter would have felt flattered, but now he's just exhausted and mostly numb.

 _He also feels a bit woozy, all of sudden._

Peter's bundled into the big meeting room as quickly as they can and the doors have barely sealed behind them that the questions start: Apparently the journey back from Ego has given Nova Prime and his friends enough time to get over their initial horror and to descend right into rage and despair.

 _He can barely pay attention, because the floor seems to waver under his feet._

Peter lets the flood of questions and demands wash over him without reaction, hoping that if he just keeps his mouth shut for once they will simply give up and let him rest.

He wants nothing more than some dark corner to curl up in and weep a bit.  
Maybe then the thick lump that's been forming in his chest since they left Ego's corpse behind will let up a bit.

 _His vision is blurry and there's a steady ringing in his ears and a lump in his chest and billions of stars in his mind and Peter has forgotten one very,_ very _important thing:_

 _Parasites_ always _find a way._

 _They hide deep inside of you, where nobody will ever look, where nobody will ever see, until the moment they feel safe and circumstances change and they can be assured that they can take over completely and_ spread _!_

 _Circumstances like an inhabitable atmosphere and a new stable planet under their feet…_

One moment Peter's still grieving and in the next he screams.

There's light bursting in his chest, searing through his lungs and setting his nerves alight.  
It floods his cells and drowns his mind and seeps though his skin in thousand little filaments that slowly, oh so slowly, form a shape.

Nerves come first, weaving a net of glowing blue into the air, then bones, cradling the brain he'd thought he'd destroyed, then muscles bulging, skin, hair and cloth at last.

Peter's father turns around and tuts at him.

Then he sets his body aflame with light again.

…

When Peter comes back to himself he's suspended in midair with what he first thinks are chains of light.

On a closer look they seem more like tentacles instead, spearing through his body – becoming part of it, really – without any blood but inescapable all the same.

He takes a few hasty swallows to keep himself from throwing up at the sight of it.  
Unfortunately it doesn't help a bit against the feeling…

The once pristine room around him has become a battlefield.

Corpsmen are lying next to soot-covered walls like broken tin-soldiers, the big table in the middle has been smashed to smithereens and his friends – his brave, so severely outclassed friends, who stood against Ronan and an Infinity Stone and won – are among those caught up in more tentacles, pressed against the walls and forced to listen to Ego monologueing.

(If Peter wouldn't feel so sick he would almost laugh at it.

Supervillain 101: The Big Reveal.

Just another reason why he really wishes he wasn't related to that man…)

Peter's father is wandering around the room with a swagger that looks all too familiar for Peter's taste and explaining with grand gestures about his great expansion.

He's really into it, too, by the look of his face, and the little kid inside of Peter cries a bit at the sight of it. (He loves his dad still, and it isn't fair. Shouldn't you stop loving somebody once you realize they're a monster?)

Ego's talking about the millennia spent alone and the countless worlds he visited and Peter can see the dioramas flashing by before his mind's eye and what _really_ scares him is that he honestly can't say if they are his own memories or Ego's doing.

Countless worlds and countless children and countless bones that Ego pointedly _does not_ mention but Peter can see them, small and fragile, a whole mountain of them, and here's the point where he starts to struggle.

He strains against his bonds and tries to cut their light right out of him but all he achieves is getting Ego's attention.

And pain.

A long, long surge of it, that just doesn't seem to end and yet, when Peter's vision clears again, all that seems to have passed are a few seconds.

Ego's looking at him, shaking his head.

Disappointed.

Disapproving.

Almost despairing.

No rage, no anger, just a father bemoaning the disobedience of his toddler, a master the stupidity of his pet, a craftsman the unpreparedness of the tool he wants to use…

Peter feels thoroughly sick of it.  
(The least Ego could do is take him seriously…)

His father steps closer to pat his cheek, promising him that he will learn in time and Peter feels a cold shiver run down his spine.

And eternity alone with Ego – he had a lot of nightmares going like this.

Another surge of pain, of light, stealing Peter's mind away, and when his brain fights free of the haze this time, Ego's back to entertaining his audience: River Lilies and Ravagers and finally a son capable of using the light –

And how didn't Peter notice the blue gelatinous mass the floor has turned into before?

He can see it now (maybe because he has trouble lifting his head again), darkly marbled and pulsating and looking like a weird mix of jelly and concrete.

 _He can feel it now, like an extension of himself, already swallowing half of Nova Central Command and straining for the planet's surface. People running, people screaming, people half-assimilated by Ego's version of primordial ooze._

 _It consumes everything in its path, storing its molecules away for later use, for when it has reached and converted Xandar's core into another brain for Ego._

 _Another bout of pain and light and the bluish mass grows again and Peter understands now that the tentacles impaling him are sapping his strength away to speed up the recovery of his father._

 _Peter failed._

Sailors and seas and tears running down Peter's cheeks and he can't even remember the last time he's been crying.

It stings when the salt hits the patches of skin where the light burns the parts of him that are mortal right out of him, but it's a welcome distraction from the drain he's now aware of deep inside his core.

Another surge, a loss of time, and when he's aware again there are familiar fingers on his skin, tenderly wiping the tear tracks away.

Sentiment.

Ephemeral.

Eternity.

Gods shouldn't feel this way, should rejoice in the Expansion, in fulfilling their purpose.

Yes, Ego knows this hurts, this trap of mortality, he almost succumbed to it himself once upon a time.

Three times he visited his River Lilly knowing all the words to every song on the radio, three times and then he left her, with a baby in her belly and a tumor in her head.

The world stops.

 _Not me, a tiny voice whispers deep inside his head. It wasn't me._

 _The relief he feels only pales in comparison to the horror, the_ hate!

Then the world roars into motion again.

Light explodes and blue surges upwards – but Ego stops it all with a wave of his hand and more tentacles spearing through Peter like his father waited for this. (And he did, the bastard, didn't he? More emotion means more _light_ and Peter's playing right into his hands without any hope of escaping it.)

Grow up, Peter's told, like so often before, and he's so, _so_ seriously _sick of it!_  
(Hell, he _tried_ growing up and look what that got him.)

Then his walkman cracks in uncaring hands and he barely hears the words his father – no, _Ego_ – speaks _because blinding white fills his vision and he feels his consciousness expanding in time with the ooze greedily flooding over the planet's surface._

 _Billions of stars sing in the back of his mind, pulsating with his heart-beat, waiting for their chance to shine, to consume, once Xandar's been converted._

 _Billions of spores, waiting their turn, all connected to Peter as their lynchpin, their conduit, shackled to him – through him – to Ego and his light._

 _Peter's the sailor and Peter's the sea, a Flying Dutchman haunting a dead ocean without life inside, but_ Peter's also mortal, a backwater Terran from the more remote parts of the universe, and if there's one thing Terrans have going for them, it's pure unadulterated spite.

Terrans adapt.

Terrans survive.

They aren't strong or fast or have any special powers, but they are stubborn as hell and never give up without a fight.

This Terran part of Peter is now going to save, well, maybe not his life, but at least the rest of the universe.

And if only to _spite_ the asshole who has the audacity to call himself his father.

 _A billion stars, a billion spores, but only one sun, bright and purple, calling to Peter just as he calls to the Stone._

Blue crumbles and parts like water on his order, bright tentacles fall apart like shapeless snow, and Peter lifts one hand, sneering at his father, and catches the orb the light delivers to him.

(He risks one last glance to his friends, before he ends it, not sure if it's a goodbye or simply for reassurance.

Maybe he would say some words, had he more time, but the only thing he can think of is to mouth a desperate "Catch!" to Gamora and hope she understands before it's too late.)

 _Blinding purple fills his vision and he feels his consciousness writhing in time with the ooze crumbling to ash on the planet's surface._

 _Billions of stars scream in the back of his mind, stuttering with his heart-beat, losing their shine, consumed, burned to cinders by a power so much greater than anybody could ever comprehend._

 _Billions of spores, snuffed out long before their time, all connected to Peter as their lynchpin, their conduit, shackled to him – through him – to Ego and his light._

 _And to the Infinity Stone he just turned against himself…_

 _…_

Peter didn't expect to wake up again.

He turned the Stone against himself, against the light at the center of him, in the full knowledge that he probably wouldn't survive and he was alright with that, as long as he just took Ego with him.

And yet, here he lies, curled up in ash and dust, surrounded by friends murmuring reassurance.

Weeping.

 _The stars in the back of his mind are gone._

And he's never before felt so alone...


	7. Chapter 7

They say that time heals every wound.

Peter's not so sure but at least it should serve to dull the pain.

He's standing on a balcony overlooking the capital of Xandar and watching the people rebuild their lives. (Again.)

There are still deep trenches here and there, marks on the city where Ego simply ate parts away, but the overall loss of life was thankfully small.

Apparently (just like creating) digesting life is harder than it looks at first and when Ego's mass crumbled it gave its victims free again.

Nova Central Command was the hardest hit, with its once proud tower looking like a skeleton now.  
Nothing more but a vaguely stable collection of support beams and some floors and walls, and yet the Corpsmen seem all to be going about their business as usual – as everybody is, actually – and Peter for once doesn't know if he's envious of or appalled by it.

He survived Earth and its bullies and his mother's death, space pirates and Ego and whatever the universe threw at him in-between, Ronan and Infinity Stones and his friends' very own special brands of insanity and yet, right here, right now is the point when he's not quite sure how to go on.

That's never happened before.

There was always something new to see, something new to discover, something to run to (or away from) but right here, right now, he only feels tired and lost and aimless.

 _And alone._

 _Always so awfully alone._

There's movement behind him and Denarian Saal leans on the railing next to him.

(There's always somebody with him by now, since they squirreled the Infinity Stone safely away.  
If out of fear that he will go after it again or out of some other all-important reason Peter's too exhausted to give a damn about right now.)

(Or maybe he's just too scared of what he'll find to try and figure it out.)

Saal holds something colorful out to him and after a few seconds Peter recognizes his walkman.

(Did Peter ever mention that Xandarians are nerdy little over-achievers and that he really loves them for it?)

The sight of his old companion makes him smile for the first time in days and Peter can't help the warmth spreading in his chest.

 _He missed this…_

 _Smiling._

He takes the walkman, puts on the headphones and waits for the music to start –

It's not the same.

It's very close, he will give them that, but the pitch is slightly wrong and the smell is just too sharp and the ridges and scratches he remembers from a lifetime of use are all gone.

There was a nick at the side where Peter once hit it against a table and the tape always stalled slightly between song two and three.

The sound of the innards is just a tick too quiet and the place where his mom carved his initials is blank and scratch-free.

The headphones are too soft and the sound too clear and he's pretty sure he will never have to unscramble this particular tape.

The background-noise is missing and the color is too pale and _light blooms under his fingertips and recreates his walkman anew._

 _It takes memories and sentiments and answers his wishes and when it fades again_ his walkman looks like new.

Well, the old new. (New old?)

Peter feels his breath catch in his throat and his fingers tighten possessively around his recreated treasure.  
Then he risks a glance up at Denarian Saal, expecting shock and resigned to no slight amount of fear. (How could there not be after what Ego did?)

He sees only acceptance instead.

Respect.

Peter feels his spirits lift and a full-fledged grin bloom on his face.

He turns the volume up and feels one of his feet begin to tap and starts to quietly sing along.

Time heals every wound, they say

Peter's determined to find out.

He has eternity in front of him (or however long his life lasts).

He can go wherever he wants and stay however long he wants and for the first time in years he's completely and utterly free.  
The future is bright and there's so much of it and so much to discover and see.

Peter can't wait.

…

(Maybe he will talk the others into hunting down the Ogord-clan next. Time to introduce himself to his gramps on the other side of the family. Get some dirt on Yondu and hear all the embarrassing tales. And maybe he will even put in a good word for his dad while he's there, who knows. Depends on how nicely the blue bastard asks…)

(Oh, and screw 'Growing up' by the way, Peter's happy as he is.)

(Who knows how long Celestials live anyway?)

…

 _And if there are still the slightest flickers of purple in his light, well, he's certainly never going to tell…_


End file.
